Rest

Well, this will be the opposite of my summer blog posts!



During the summer the farm is a flurry of sweat, dirt and ever changing To Do Lists. At the moment now, the farm is a flurry of....well, flurries I guess!
There is still the usual livestock care, feeding, and evenings spent in the shop, but there is now time for some more leisurely activities as well.


This has been a pretty strange winter weather wise. The photo above was taken after a winter thunderstorm, complete with a winter rainbow. I have never seen that before.

We have had some crazy warm days, even up to +10C! Last night it didn't even get to freezing and the flurries coming down now are definitely mixed with rain. It has frozen to be quite the slippery mess in areas, which has created some difficulties for us, but mostly fun!

Our pond in the back pasture has frozen over and we have been thoroughly enjoying it! Everyday this week we have been out skating, sometimes twice in the same day even. The little farmers and I are loving every second of it! Little farm girl is mastering her skates quickly and little farm boy loves to ride in the sled that I tie around my waist. Its excellent exercise and we all come in pretty tired!

The weather has made for some neat ice crystals too!







So beautiful!
Sometimes I forget to come in after doing chores, its little things like these that get me sidetracked. That, and horses, and kittens, and tracks in the snow, and stars, and itchy pigs. Maybe I am just highly distract-able, but I like to think anyone would be distracted by those...



We also have been getting ready for Christmas! We usually wait until pretty close to Christmas to pick a tree but the little farmers just couldn't wait. We found just the right one but somehow it seemed to grow as we got closer to home. What looked like a pretty reasonable tree in the field got a lot bigger once we got it inside!



Little farm boy helps decorate it after we had trimmed a few feet off the top and bottom of it.



And I will leave you with a picture of this smiling pig enjoying the warm temperatures.

I am in the thick of a book I am itching to get back to. Its called Gaining Ground and its the story of a farm start up. It does such a good job of capturing the dream and passion of farming and the ups and downs of trying to get a farm off the ground. As I read it I feel the swell of excitement as the farm grows, the bitter disappointments of failures and the sickening doubt of whether the farm will ever able to support itself. I could hardly tear myself away to write this so I am going to curl right back up with it and read until little farm boy is awake. Its a nice way to spend a break from actual farming...