Winter 2012

The herd checking out the snow 1-16-12

Danyel

Alixandrea

Well -- have  you noticed that it snowed out?  I took notice a few days ago and was surprised that white wet stuff covered the ground and made everything wet and cold.  Though my daughters put on pretty dresses and took thier shoes off and took pictures in this stuff.  I am not sure if it was to see how long they could go before they got frost bite.  The photo's turned out great! 
This snow thing causes so much work for us farmers.  We end up having to haul alot of water buckets to the goats and cow.  You have to use the tractor to move hay around.  And then there is the temperature.... cold.
We seem to just go with the flow and keep moving on.
My trip to Africa is almost here... I am going to the Pikes Place Market with David Sat. morning.  I will work the market with him and then we will meet up with Jodi and head to the airport.  It will be a long day for sure.  My flight leaves at 11:45pm and we wont be in Kigali until the 23 of January. 
We have a lay over in Ethiopia and then onto Rwanda. 


Tue's Snow 10 inches on deck railing 1-16-12



The milk parlor and barn this morning 25 inches 1-18-12

the deck railing this monring and in the background you can see the corner of our fence 1-18-12

Marcus checking us out from behind the barn 1-18-12

My patio furniture - table and chairs 1-18-12

Well the snow this morning was so .... I don't know.  I was hoping the weather man was wrong as usual.  But to no avail we ended up with 25 inches of snow.  David had to get the tractor out before we could even go to the barn.  The power was off since 3:30am and when Ali woke me up at 5:00 am to see the snow I was shocked.  But the reason she woke me was even funnier... She had Jonny inside last night (one of our cats), well he wanted outside and she opened her bedroom window and put him on the window sill and sent him on his way only to have him disappear into the snow.  She jumped out the window to save her cat and thats when she found out how much snow we had.  The cat spent the rest of the morning inside.  Well once I was a wake and saw the snow I couldnt go back to sleep.  So out onto the couch I went and watched the snow fall.  I woke the girls up at 8am and we still didn't have any power.  So David moved the BBQ closer to the back door and we heated the baby goats milk and the girls took it out and fed some cold babies - thier heat lamps were off.  We started melting some snow so we could start milking the goats by hand.  Just as we were heading to the barn the power came on... Ya!  I cleaned the parlor and milked the goats.  I was done at about 10:30am.  Our adopted grandparents had gone and got pizza the day before so they could come up and have pizza with us before I leave for Africa.  David cleaned the driveway up by going up and down it about 3 times so they could get thier truck up the driveway.  They came about 11:45 for pizza.  It sure did taste good too.  David went out and made trailes around the farm so we could get to the places we needed to.  It sure looks funny too.  He also had to scrape the snow off the chicken house so the roof wouldn't break.
Now the funny goats are the nigerians... the snow is deeper than thier backs.  Ali made a trail for them to be able to get to the hay feeder and I wish I had the picture she took of them on her phone.  So funny.  Knight our llama had about 18 inches of snow on his back.  He seemed alright today though. 
I layed down about 2pm and took a nap.  Got up at 3 and packaged cheese for David to take to Olympia tomorrow.  He printed out the invoices.  I think everyone knows what thier jobs are while I am gone.  Mark and Teneka (I may not of spelled her name right) are making the chevre for me and packaging the cheese and labeling for David.  Mark made the last batch of Chevre by himself with me in the background.  I had to hang it cause it snowed and no one could get up our driveway yesterday.  Today we all were snowed in .... hopefully tomorrow afternoon he can come up and take the cheese down and package some cheese for David for Sat.'s market.  I feel confident that Mark and Teneka can handle the task. 
I will Skype David while in Africa... and possibly email when in town.  I won't be adding anything to the blog until I get home ..... so no one panic after Friday evening....I will blog each day with pictures when I am back... this will take 3 weeks... so patience will be in order.  Especially for me if something cool happens.
Well thats my up date for today.  Stay warm and dry and enjoy the beauty of the season.