These are the things that dominate our life lately. This winter has been abnormally snowy. It seems that every few days we get dumped on with another storm. Full-fledged storms, not just dustings of snow. Our trusty skidsteer has generally done well with clearing the snow, and we have some impressive mountains of snow at the end and edges of our road. The one flaw in our plowing plan was that we had a spell of very warm weather in late December, which took the frost out of the ground. All that soft ground was covered again with all the snow. So the edges of the driveway are pretty squishy. We've found out just how squishy by sinking 7000 lbs of skid steer into it. Many times. Marco, the logger who has been working here, commented that every time he came there was a new hole beside the road. He was exaggerating, but not much. We now have a set of tracks, which are in the process of being installed (the 30-minute estimate on the instructions was a bit optimistic, as we ended up having to get an extra piece for each track so that they'd fit around the tires). Anyway... it's much colder now, there are reflective markers at the edges of the road, and we're cautiously optimistic that our days of miring the skid steer in the muck are behind us.
Besides pushing snow around, we've both been spending a lot of time with a chainsaw, thinning and clearing in the treeline between our house and the field (soon to be field, pasture, and garden). Marco has been working to get the biggest trees thinned, and we're tackling the smaller-diameter stuff. Marco took out 3 truckloads of pulpwood out, and we traded that for his felling and hauling out a nice pile of pine that we will mill for lumber. The stuff we've been taking out wasn't even worthy of the pulp truck - smaller firs and poplar, mostly. It's very satisfying work - like weeding, but on a much bigger (and mechanical) scale.
I'm back at school -so far I haven't told any patients that my main experience giving meds (and shots, especially) has been on farm animals! Ben starts his welding training/job in a couple weeks. Abrahm continues to explore and entertain. He's still enthralled by all things mechanical, with the exception of snowmobiles (thank goodness!). I ordered seeds this week, doing a joint order with my first farm employer. For anyone interested, Fedco Seeds carries no varieties owned/distributed by Monsanto - it makes conscientious ordering much easier! I'm not quite ready for spring yet, but it sure has been fun poring over seed catalogs.
Thanks for checking in!
Leslie and Ben
