Signs of Spring?

This morning I sat in the living room, curled up on the couch in front of the wood fire, sipping on my tea. Karol looked out the window and said, "It's SNOWING!". For true, we had some flurries this morning. It has been cold, Papa John has to go out and break the ice in the water buckets every morning. I am not quite ready for spring, planning one more ski day this coming week, so we need it to stay cold for a while longer. Regardless of the cold, we spend most of our weekends out of doors, and I have the cherry red cheeks to prove it! I am keeping the moisturizer producers in business. John wears long underwear and overalls and flannel. We always have a humidifier running in the house, and I have my automatic plant waterers that Andy got me for Christmas that keep the English Ivy and the Airplane plants alive.

Can I say it again? I love it here.

Today, as we were playing around with the new dump shovel tractor implement I noticed some interesting things on our property. There are numerous and many dumping areas, where people have dumped metal, trash, etc., and we periodically spend time cleaning and removing this old trash. I noticed there are a ton of springs! Maybe old mattresses? Machinery? who knows? But as cold as it's been, signs of SPRING it's not!

A New Implement for the Tractor

Papa John is always on the lookout for implements for his tractors. He now has a box scrape, a carryall , a boom pole, a plow, a finishing mower, and as of today, a dump shovel attachment! It looks like this may end up to be a favorite, because he can now move dirt, mulch, manure, etc, etc. quickly and easily.

Sunday Afternoon

Another lazy Sunday afternoon on the farm. Goats spend the day munching. We still have a bunch of Christmas trees. After the holidays Papa John hitched up the trailer and hit some neighborhoods where people were putting out their Christmas trees. We figure why let them end up in a dump somewhere or get chipped into mulch when our goats have no forage in the winter? Funny critters -- they will not eat off the ground. So we end up going out and rolling the trees every couple of days and that seems to fool them. Between the trees and the hay that we've put up, daily grain rations stay about the same, regardless of the season. The only thing we do differently is that goats that are on milking rotation get a dairy feed instead of the medicated type. Here we see the Goat Whisperer confering with some of his kids

Happy 60th Birthday John!

After the doors to the big barn were up, we got busy putting up the hayloft. It's about 8 feet wide by 24 feet long. That will store quite a bit of hay. We moved all the hay we had up there and we still had room for more. Looks like we will be able to store about 200 bales. Add the hay storage space in the buck barn, which is another maybe 50 bales -- that's a lot of hay! As you can see, we made use of the space under the hayloft for storage. A good portion of the space is storing Karol's stuff.In front of the hayloft is Papa Johns' workshop. It took a whole weekend to get it organized, but now he can find everything. In fact, a couple of weeks ago we borrowed an orbital sander from a friend, and when organizing the barn, we found we already had one!

This is the biggest egg we've ever seen. We kept watching for the chicken that was waddling funny, but could never figure out which one she was.Andy and Karol, on their way out on a date.
Sunday Tim came over to help us hang the TVAndy was the one who lifted it into place
Ken and Val came over, to help celebrate John's birthday. Hope you are all sitting down, because I told Ken and Val to come over at 3:00 and lo and behold, they arrived at 3:02!

Papa John opening cards
Even cards from Daniel and Paul

And opening presents




Birthday cake


Tim and Rei like to come visit

Only in North Carolina!

Last week as I was driving back from Charlotte, we got hit with a winter storm. As I was driving into Winston-Salem, the flakes started falling. There was not enough accumulation to build up on the road, so it must have been the sheer disbelief that was causing people to drive on US-52 at five miles an hour! So we all cruised through town, foot on brake, watching the snowflakes hit the windshield. By the time I got back to Smith-Reynolds Airport to turn in my rental car, the snow had started accumulating on the ground. As I was pumping gas I noticed how big the flakes were and had to take a couple more pictures.

It sure was pretty to look at. John and I were talking about it being the best location for weather. We get just enough of the white stuff but not too much. We can drive into the mountains and find snow and we can go skiing.

Last weekend, John and I went to visit Tim at his place in North Wilkesboro. We got there after lunch on Saturday and set up camp. Tim grilled us up some burgers for dinner and we sat down to watch a movie in the den. Rei curled up to watch with us. Sunday morning John and Tim headed out to the garage to put together his yard wagon. Now he can drive his riding mower down the street to fill up his gas cans! Here he's giving John and Toby a little ride!

Then we helped Tim get his guest room TV moved from the garage to the basement.

We also transported the new desk, the chair, a sander, sandpaper, and a couple of cans of stain for him to pick from. Now he can spend some time refinishing his desk when the weather warms up a little.