January kids

 Big blue eyes and a snotty nose, mmm.

We've been having some warm weather. It has been above zero and pushing twenty degrees almost every day this week. The kids have gotten out for some sledding and visits to the chickens daily.

The kids love feeding each other. Here Avery is feeding Noah some egg salad for breakfast.

  

 

This is Avery's favorite new place to play, Noah's bean box. It is interesting that Noah has played with this tub of rice and beans for a couple years now and has never tried climbing into it. Avery, on the other hand insists on sitting in it and mostly likes to scoop and dump as opposed to her brother who has always viewed it as a place for machines to push material around.

January Days (retitled)

Our computer is on it's last leg. We spent the last week without it, (both going through withdrawels). Dustin managed to get it working yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed catching up on my favorite blogs. It is about five degrees below zero this morning. Over the last week our temperatures in the hills have ranged from zero to twenty below. I've come in from chores on numerous occasions with "its warmed up out there." To which Dustin sarcastically comments about five below being considered warm. When heading out for an hour of chores half of the work is getting dressed. I tend to brace for the cold and think it is going to be just bitter, and once I'm walking up the hill I am often surprised at how nice and refreshing the cold air feels. 

As long as I'm moving I don't get overly cold. I like to start chores with a hike up the hill. I save sitting and milking for last, as my toes usually get cold no matter how much I wiggle them. How certain temperatures feel is all relative of course. After twenty below, five below does feel like ten above. Our cold is a dry cold with hardly any wind, so it sounds bad but could be much worse if we had high winds or humidity. This week when it got up to zero I was doing chores without a face mask. Once it gets to ten below I really enjoy the comfort of a face covering with just my eyes exposed. At twenty below this is even more important as my nose hairs start frosting up and it is chilly on my teeth to breath through my mouth. The face mask helps with my air intake in addition to keeping the cold air off my neck, chin and cheeks.


The animals are all doing well. We've been turning on the bucks heat lamp at about ten below. Their stall is not as well insulated as the does. They spend a lot more time outside than the does do. I have a feeling that it is because there is less of a difference between their indoor and outdoor temperatures. We still haven't used a heatlamp with the does stall. It is already close to thirty degrees warmer at most times than the outside temp. If we turned on a heatlamp I'd fear that they'd start to lose their warm coats and never go outside. We've been using a heatlamp in the main chicken coop. Otherwise most the eggs would probably freeze before we got to them. 

Indoors, we are staying warm. Towels and blankets line the bottoms of our doors and we have one set of french doors covered with a clear plastic that helps keep the draft down. In kitchen news I've had a couple successes this week. I have been making Kombucha tea since last spring and I've been meaning to write an entire post on this endeavor. For now I'm just going to say that I made my tastiest batch by mixing the finished tea product with a half a cup of homemade raspberry syrup and then letting it sit out for a few days to carbonate. The result tastes like homemade raspberry soda and I can barely tell that it is Kombucha tea. Yesterday I made fruit leather with some green grapes that needed used up. I added homemade applesauce (apples from a friend's crab apple tree), and a few wild blueberries for added flavor and color. I've only made fruit leather on two other occasions and I over dried it both times. This time it turned out soft, leathery and tasty and the kids love it. 

So far this week I made a big pot of beef stew with some local beef. I made a batch of pumpkin cranberry muffins with one of the sweet mama squash that I bought at the market last fall (one left). Last night we had copper river red Salmon that my brother gave us. I bought our first bag of carrots and potatoes since last winter. We have finally run out of most of our stored vegetables. My garlic is beginning to grow so I need to blend the rest of it up with some olive oil and stick it in the freezer. I have a few remaining golden beets in the fridge and some frozen and canned veggies, herbs and fruit. This is the only time of year where instead of feeling guilty that I'm buying out of state veggies, I am proud that most of my cart is whole foods instead of processed boxed foods. 


Today I am going to continue my deep cleaning mission and tackle a couple cupboards that Avery has figured out how to open. We are going to make a fresh batch of playdough, another batch of fruit leather and possibly some cheddar or graham crackers. I pulled out some meat to thaw. I am gearing up to make some jerkey. I've been taking the easy route lately and feeding the kids a lot of white flour lately in the form of tortillas, noodles and sandwiches. I'm hoping to devote my creative urges into making some non- flour based snacks and meals. Heres to creative January urges. What are you making or baking on these short winter days?

January updates

Noah and Avery are doing pretty well for playing inside the same four walls day after day. This week was above zero and both kids got outside to play several times. Noah has his own play area indoors where he builds machines and houses for his lego men. He has recently started working with paper, paint, glue, crayons and glitter making mixed media art. He is not much into detailed drawing. His pieces are more abstract and layered. Much to our delight his art supplies are keeping him occupied for at least an hour or more a day. Avery spends most of her time trying to get across the baby gate into her brother's play area. She has figured out how to get into the cupboards and has also learned to push chairs up to the counter to get at whatever she is not suppose to have.  Her vocabulary is growing daily. She uses her potty when she feels like it and when we are paying close attention.

 

My Cymbidium is in full bloom. I put it outside in the shade in the summer and don't bring it in until the nights have gotten cool. I put it in my coolest window in the winter and try not to let it dry out. It usually blooms this time of year. I love the waxy pastel flowers.

 

Here is a picture of some of our eggs. The dark brown eggs are the first of our Welsummer pullet eggs. We've gotten a few more since I took these photos, and they are getting darker and bigger. We are getting a few Ameraucana eggs, which are the blue eggs. Our sole female Khaki Campbell has also started laying white eggs the size of our large chicken eggs. The odd thing about the Welsummer pullets is that one of the girls was a month and a half older than the other two. I purchased two from a friend, as I lost all my Welsummer pullets but the one. However, it looks as though they all started laying this week. They group together so the older pullet cycling must have triggered the other two. We are feeling rich in eggs. We usually have three to four dozen eggs in the fridge at all times. The health food store pays $4.75 a dozen. So I've sold four dozen eggs on two occassions now, making almost fourty dollars, not bad.

 

At peace with the season

I am enjoying winter. I am at peace with the fact that it is the ninth of January and we still have months of winter to go. November and December are the easy months of winter. While dark and snowy, the days go by quickly, filled with holidays, special meals to plan, craft making and good eating in general. In early winter I am content to be back inside with the wood stove burning and the summer's harvest surrounding us. The biggest decisions being what to make for dinner, carrots or beets, potatoes or squash? 

Early winter months are well below freezing and often sub-zero, but usually our coldest months are January and February. This year we have had milder temperatures than usual. We have had a few cold spells, but they have been short lived. We have it easy in the hills. As I've said before there is often a thermal inversions and our temperatures can be a good twenty degrees warmer than in town. When it is twenty below zero in town and zero here, that's huge! Another big difference between our location and town, is that town is plagued with terrible air pollution due to wood smoke and car exhaust. This time of year when we drive down the hill we can often see a blanket of ice fogs stretching out over the town.


By the time I've recovered from the business and excitement of the Holidays, we are noticeably gaining light. January is the time of year when I let out a big sigh. I relish the slow pace for a change and look forward to tackling those projects I put off all year long, just for these slow and numbered mid-winter days.  This year my long procrastinated chores are dusting the ceiling fan, deep cleaning the house and completing online goat registration paperwork from last spring. My most anticipated January hobby is some couch time with my favorite seed catalogs.



I enjoy planning. We have been discussing what kind of poultry we want to raise this year. We are going to purchase a small incubator and hatch some of our own eggs. We are looking forward to raising a few turkeys again and more breeds of ducks. So far we have three does bred. I was hoping to have earlier kids this spring, but again it looks like we'll be waiting until April for goat babies. Thankfully this year's official letter for naming is A, after X, Y and Z, I am so excited for A names! I've been drawing out the garden and planning what to plant where. Noah and looked through a seed catalog yesterday and we were both discussing what we want to plant. He is most excited about corn, followed by potatoes (wants to make potato chips) and then carrots. I am looking forward to raising more and bigger everything. I'll probably be writing numerous posts on garden plans here soon.


I am delighted to have all of January and February for planning and dreaming. Eating and sleeping. There are always farm chores to get us out of the house for a couple hours of the day. The rest of my day is spent watching the kids play and planning the next meal. March will come soon enough, with its eye blinding sunny, snowy and possibly warmer days. March will be time to put all the planning into action with seed starting and chick ordering and hatching.  For now I am ever so content to relax into these sleepy days of winter and dream of chicks cheeping in the hallway, baby goats to name and the smell of soil and green starts in the house once again.