More weather pics

Here are some more pics from the storm. I am thinking we are about done with it now. We have been lucky as a good deal of people are without electricity and we still have ours. The animals are fine and after a recount in the light this morning, it looks like we are only missing one chicken. She may still be in the barn, so I think we are okay.

These are not our cows. They belong to the man that owns the pasture surrounding us. They are okay, but looked misserable when I went out this morning. Poor things don't have any shelter at all out there.

Well, now on to clean up. You can see how high the snow is up to the shop. Dh is going to dig that out so he can get to the tractor and then he has to dig the blade out. Hopefully he doesn't get the tractor stuck before he can get to the blade. We are completely snowed in right now. I have no idea what the roads are like, but by the time we have our driveway cleared they should at least have major highways pretty good. Not that we are going anywhere. We are staying home!!!

Crazy Weather

We have had some crazy weather since yesterday!!! I took a few pics out our one window that we can see out of, and I'll take some more later when the snow finally stops.

This one is toward our lean-to. You can see that the inside is almost filled up with snow. I'm thinking that drift is about 5ft tall.


Can't tell much from here. Behind the trailor is the stock tank. Can't see it? That's because it is completely under snow now:) We are going to have to dig out the water spiket too to give the animals their water.

And here are our cars. They aren't going anywhere for a while. Our shop has snow up to the big door handles, so we have to dig the shop/barn out so we can get the tractor out to start moving snow around.

Not sure how the animals are doing. Everyone exept 3 chickens are where they should be. Either in the barn or coop. I went to put chickens away last night and only 12 of the 19 were in the coop. We found 4 more of them, half frozen wondering around and put them in the coop. They couldn't see over the snow drifts to find the coop!!! Couldn't find 3 of them, so I'm hoping they were hiding in the barn or in the lean-to.

Will put more pics on later when it stops snowing:)

Hope everyone is safe and warm.

Garden fun:)

I kept hoping to get a bit more done before posting, but I relized that there is still much to do before I'm going to be ready to plant, so I thought I would give an update for what we are doing. I've been wanting to play around with raised beds for a few years now, however it cost more to plant a raised bed than just directly in the ground, so we've never done it. This year we came up with the idea of using cinder blocks, so they will last and not draw termites being that this one is so close to the house. I am planning on putting my lettuce, carrots and herbs in this one. I'll be able to cover it on the cooler nights easier than if it were in our big garden bed too:)


Here is most of the cinder blocks with one of our cats finding the plastic wrapping quite entertaining:)


And here is our start on it, with more cats checking to see if it is level and straight (and if any mice are hiding in the holes:).

And here it is finished. It did take a lot longer to put together than I expected. I had not thought of the time it would take to level and square it. Actually, had it been up to me, I wouldn't have bothered, but those kind of things drive dh crazy:) So it is very level and square to the house, nice and perfect (until I go and plant in it that is).

No, it doesn't have dirt in it yet. This is the beginning of the things that still needs done before I can plant. You see, dh wanted a flatbed for his truck, and so far it has been far nicer than a regular bed for him, but it doesn't work for hauling dirt and such;) So he needed to get wood to build sides that will go off and on the bed. Then he decided that it would be great to have a sprinkler system for this raised bed, which he is right, but now we need sprinkler heads:) Then we need to go to his parents and get dirt. THEN we need to build an encloser for the chickens and not allow them to be so FREE (do you see the one in the pic trying to find something to eat?). But before we can cage in the chickens I have to clean a large area around the chicken coop so they have a nice place to be.....THEN we will need to get some T-posts (thankfully we have the fencing we need) so we can build the enclosure. I'm getting tired just thinking about it!!! At that point I'll be able to plant:)

But since I couldn't wait, I went ahead and started some seeds inside. They never do well inside, but I had to give it a try again anyway:) I planted these (ground cherries and sunberries) a little over a week ago and nothing has come up yet, but I'll keep waiting for a while. This is the 3rd year I've tried the ground cherries (they should be a little sweeter than a tomato, but in the same family), and if they don't grow this year, I'm giving up on them until I have a green house. The sunberries (just a bit larger than a pea, taste comparable to a blueberry), are new to me this year, we'll see if anything happens.

Hopefully in the next year or two I'll get my green house. We have some of the materials we want to use for it, but haven't had time to work on it. Most things we grow can be started outdoors, so it won't matter much anyway:)

I'll have a stitchy post in a few days:)