Brrrrr…..
“Winter descended suddenly, with bone-chilling cold. The damp, raw wind swept in fem the ocean and entered through cracks in the walls of the hut. It made the fire flicker and hiss.”
Lois Lowry from Son (Giver Quartet, Book 4)
I started reading this series of books this past weekend and have been enthralled with them, reading every second I can find here and there. When I came across this quote yesterday morning I had to laugh. There I was warming myself in front of the wood stove at 5:30 am…
We were up early yesterday morning, the fire radio called about a fire alarm at 4:30 which ended up being a false alarm. It hailed once again an hour later for a car in a ditch. I was up early and it was cold. The outdoor thermometer read -9 and the indoor thermostat read 54 – BRRRRRR. Winter has truly arrived.
I’m thankful that our basement is filled with stacks of lots of dry wood, which we worked on cutting, splitting, and stacking two years ago. Our wood for the next year is already in stacks outdoors to dry this coming summer.
What is the coldest weather you experience during your winter?
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Goals
I don’t make resolutions this time of year, but I do try to think about what I want to accomplish in the coming year. Usually I come up with one big project that will take a large amount of time and spend time planning out the steps for that project.
This year my goal is to clean and organize our ginormous garage. It will be a task that’s for sure. When we moved to Maine we hit the ground running and unfortunately the garage has been a bit of a mess since we unloaded the moving truck.
My goal for the year, mostly this summer when it’s warm, is to get all the junk in the garage organized. No doubt I’ll take a trip to the dump and a load or a few to Goodwill. Mostly, things just need organized into boxes and on shelves. Hooks need to go in he wall for hanging bits and bobs and everything needs a good cleaning. It’s one of those projects that I haven’t made the time for the past two year, but 2015 will be the year!
Did you set any goals for the coming year?
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Winter Garden
In my office I have quite a winter garden growing. It’s not for me, it’s for the chickens. I’m writing an article for Grit Magazine about small scale fodder for livestock and thus I’m experimenting with the best methods for small scale fodder systems. Over the past couple weeks I’ve been working on perfectly my system.
It’s certainly nice to see so much green out of the corner of my eye while I work. In a few days these trays will be a carpet of lush barley sprouts ready for the chickens to devour. They grow about an inch a day, which is quite remarkable. I’ve always wanted to have a fodder system for winter chicken greens and I’m thankful for the nudge I needed to finally get it up and running.
Do you have any new experiments going this winter?
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Ahhhh……
I’m looking forward to doing a little bit of this today, hopefully with a book in hand.
It’s going to be a chilly weekend with a winter storm rolling in tonight that’s supposed to dump 4-8 inches of snow on us. You’ll find me in front of the wood stove staying warm!
Do you plans to spend time relaxing this weekend?
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Friday Favorite: New Garden Areas
There’s something exciting about new garden areas, even if they are only an extension of another garden area. For the past two years I’ve been mulling over my plan for the main garden back behind the garage. As I work I look at the surrounding areas, the lay of the land, the trees, etc. I plan out where access roads/paths will be, where hedges will be planted and where drainage ditches will need dug. All of these plans lay in the future, a few years down the line, but that doesn’t mean that I can start preparing. The garden in the back needs expanded quite a bit to make way for perennial borders, fences, and hedges. The pigs have helped greatly in tilling up the sod to make way for these new gardens. Now that they are finished with their work I set to work laying down cardboard with a this layer of compost.
In the spring they will be over seeded with various cover crops that will be mowed down for a weed smothering mulch. It’s a slow process, this garden will take more than a decade to become what I see in my mind. The slow, steady process of reaching that goal is fulfilling, and it helps me learn to be patient. There is such new promise in a new garden bed, one that has only grown sod. The possibilities are endless and that’s what I’m loving right now. I just need to remind myself that it’s a slow process, because admittedly it can be disheartening at times when you left behind a place that was just reaching it’s full potential and are starting all over again. I have to relish the newness and the possibilities!
Do you have plans to expand your gardens this coming year?
