Oh, Just Count Out About 200 . . .

"Oh, just count out about 200," suggests my husband as I stare at this pile on the kitchen table, on the very snowy, stay home day that was last Saturday morning:

We have entered a new phase of gardening. With this pile of sunflower seeds, I think we've officially become seed savers. Which means that instead of buying seed from the store, catalog, whatever . . . we just save some of the seed from last year's crops to plant the coming year. I know this is not a new idea at all; in fact I think that people a hundred years ago would find it odd that you wouldn't do this. But for us crazy people, its a new adventure.

It all started last summer when one of the mammoth sunflowers we grew from seed turned out to be truly mammoth. I'm talking a seed head that was 18 to 24 inches across. I looked at that flower, and then looked at my husband and said that "that one is not going for turkey food. With those kind of genetics, we ought to try some of those seeds out." So when it dried out, we raked all the seeds out it and a couple of other nice looking sunflower seed heads, and put them in vented ziplocs, in our chilly upstairs bedroom.

With all the snow that has showed up over the past couple of days, we were feeling kinda bad that we didn't have any seed to put out in the bird feeders. Oh wait, we have bags of sunflower seeds upstairs, and we surely are not going to need 1000's of seeds for planting; let's just count out a couple of hundred of the best looking ones and feed the rest to the birds. This is how I ended up with the pile of sunflower seeds on my kitchen table.


I was literally counting them out ten at a time into a container to get 200. Up close they look like this:

Going for solid seeds, no borer holes, and little to no mildew on the outside. The bigger the better, as long as they are solid and not hollow feeling or cracked.

Turns out 200 in the container looks like this:

Which according to Ryan didn't seem like enough, so then he joined in the sorting, and we just sorted until we filled up the container. Not that we will plant even half of those, but you know, we'd rather have too many than not enough.

The rest went into the bird feeder, which our neighborhood cardinals and juncos seemed to enjoy; judging by the amount of sunflower seed hulls on the snow.

Winter Wonderland

It snowed!

And for a couple of days at least, we're blanketed in white. It is lovely. As it was falling while we were out doing chores last evening, it was like cold, fine sand. It made an eerie rushing sound as it blew against the dried, dormant late blooming clematis . . .

Overnight the wind blew even more, and settled the snow in to drifts here and there. Which meant that Ryan got to use the snowblower to move this snow:

And now the driveway is cleared, and there are nice paths out to the barnyard and the chicken house. And the mail person didn't have to worry about getting stuck delivering mail to our house. Yay for a husband that likes to use the snowblower. It helps that it was a Saturday morning, and there was nowhere to go and the sun was shining.


A view out the upstairs window looked like this . . .

And tonight there was that lovely golden quality to the sun on the snow. I kept seeing it while we were doing chores, but it went away before I got a chance to get my camera. And also a picture I didn't get taken today, the wind marks on the snow, which looks like the little tiny waves on the edge of a lake, frozen in place.  Beautiful and wonderous!

Checking In From Siberia

So . . . winter has finally decided to show up. With a vengeance. But's that's ok. It is January after all. High of 19 today . . . snow . . . wind. Lots of fun little drifts all over the yard. I have no clue how much snow we actually have gotten. It is light and fluffy and the wind has tossed it hither and yon.


It is the first day all winter that I think the chickens have stayed inside the whole time, except to deposit eggs in the hay feeder. Which they did an amazing job of, all eight of them put one out today. This only happens maybe once every 2 weeks.


If you really want to know the general consensus of the weather here on the farm, I think Shadow's yowl from the porch bench might have expressed it best:

If only I had thought to video record him, you could have had the sound to go with it. If you notice, he is pathetically holding up his front paw, which he has been limping on all week, even though we can't find anything wrong with him. I told Ryan I think he's faking it, and is just trying to get extra attention.

Making Peace with a Mild Winter . . . so far

The past month or two, we've really been struggling here on the farm, to make our peace with winter being mild this year. I'll explain why.

Instead of the lovely inches of snow, solid ground underfoot, and sparkling clear mornings . . . we've got a mud hole for a barnyard, squishy molehills on the path to the barn, and gray, rainy mornings.

We're really big fans of 4 distinct seasons, and when you get one that starts to look a lot like another . . . well it's just not fun. And don't just ask us . . . if I were to share a picture of our steers in all their muddiness, you'd understand that they agree.

With that preface . . . you will understand why I was overjoyed to be able to spend several minutes staring out the window at this:

Yay for snow falling! And for this:

Below freezing temperatures during the day, that allowed the barnyard to freeze up for a couple of days.

And no matter what, a five alarm winter sunset to fall back on isn't too shabby.

On the day the snow was falling, if I had feathers like a bird, I would have probably been out reveling as it seems this cardinal was:

I watched him for a couple of minutes, and he was never sitting on a branch. It was almost as if he was dust bathing in snow. Or maybe he was just happy that the mud was covered too!

For now we just take what we get, and pray that all our critters continue to stay healthy through the crazy up and down temperatures, and hope that come the end of February when its time to haul the steers out, that we can have a good hard freeze to allow easy maneuvering of truck and trailer. 



From 2011 to 2012

The year of 2011 was full of new experiences here on the farm. It was the first year we raised cattle in every season from the below zero temps of February to the 90's of August. It was our first time raising pigs, and boy did we learn a lot, but thankfully we had good natured charges in Runt and Hamball, and lots of good advice from family and friends. It was the first time we have had to purchase green beans to can, and I learned that you never brag on your garden plants in front of them.

As we finish out the year, we find ourselves in the midst of a mild winter, or at least its starting that way. Every time it has snowed, it has mostly melted off before I got around to photos. This is our out the window picture from a few days ago:

We've been amused by the fact of a chicken that lays double yolks, we thought maybe this one was a triple, but was only a double:

Potatoes have been canned, in preparation for those late spring days when all the potatoes in the basement are used up, but there aren't any ready in the garden:

And for now, the garden is asleep. The strawberries and garlic hang out under their blankets of straw. Hard to believe just a couple of months ago this was a crazy mess of green and bugs.

For now, we'll be in these cool, still winter days. Stare at the Christmas tree for a couple of more days, and embrace the new year. Blessings to you and yours!