Tag: snow

Winter Patterns

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Much like the patterns created by the frost and snow, our winter days develop patterns of their own.  Chores take longer and although lengthening, daylight hours are still very short.  Even so, we find it important to pause… to enjoy…
‘the frolic architecture of the snow’.
Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windware stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

excerpted from The Snow Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essential Equipment

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Essential winter equipment for these farmgirls
 
** 100% waterproof
** cold-tested down to -40 degrees
** non-slip sole that kicks away dirt

So pretty, bright and cheerful, they make us smile on even the most grey, wet, cold, miserable mornings (so far anyway).  We love these boots!
Here’s hoping that they fit our snow-shoes. 
Well… honestly… here’s hoping that we won’t need our snow-shoes this winter.

Sugar Coated Sunday

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“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event.  You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?”
— J. B. Priestley

Our first significant snowfall was to occur this weekend.  They were predicting an accumulation of 4 to 6 inches.  Instead, it spit snow off and on Saturday, and on Sunday we awoke to this magical, sparkling, sugar-coated world.

As the sun burnt through the fog, it began to heat up the snowy ground, and large billows of steam began to rise; creating another, almost surreal world where grazing ewes and newly shorn ewe lambs became mere shadows, spirits moving through the rising mist.

Still… the Adverb

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Still…
(adverb) as previously, as yet, as in the past…

Despite a couple days of warmer temperatures, some of the feeders and the fence line still look like this

and this… Samson can still walk over the perimeter fence, so he is still in the barn

where he now thinks that his primary job is to guard the rabbits and the hay bales. This and the fact that we now need to take him on walks, has made feeding time even more of an adventure.


Poor Saul’s breeding group is still at the bottom of the hill. We are still pulling hay and water to them on a tarp, BUT we no longer have to wear snowshoes! Woooo Hoooo!

Still… the Adjective

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Still…
(adjective) inactive, silent, calm, quiet

For weeks it has been very still around here, even on the wildlife front. This weekend the barn lane became a wildlife boulevard, evidenced by the numerous turkey and deer track.

A lone deer was determined to come through the pasture and get down to the crab apple and pear trees on the side of the hill. After looking for food, it made this very pretty loop and met its own tracks to go back up the hill.

This renewed activity is causing some worry. If the deer are coming up from Wolf Creek where they have been hunkered down, the coyotes might not be far behind. With the warmer temperatures this week, we are really hoping for some significant melt-down of the snow pack.

March 1st

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MARCH

Of all the months of all the year old March has them all beat.
First we suffer from the cold, then we suffer from the heat.
The wind it huffs and puffs around. The rain falls all day,
But then at night it snows and snows and never stops to play.

Next morning out pops the sun and melts the snow, and then
The children all come running out ready for play again.

The east wind takes a look and thinks, “Now I’ll have some fun.”
He picks up the boys hats and says, “Now watch them run.”
He tosses all the kites around away off through the sky
And then he laughs, how he can make the little girls to cry.

Oh yes! Old March is full of fun, he keeps us on the go.
First we are wading through the mud, then plowing through the snow.
So of all the months of all the year, we like old March the best.
He keeps us guessing all the time and never lets us rest.

author… Lena Gertrude Dixon Wiles, our Grandmother

Sunday Muse

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Mother Winter

Storm by Robert Pack

Cascading snowflakes settle in the pines,
Sculpting each tree to fit your ghostly form
The surge of swirling wind defines
As if your human shape were what the storm
Sought to contrive, intending to express
Its consciousness of my white consciousness,
Sculpting each tree to fit your ghostly form.
Cascading snowflakes settle in the pines,
Swaying in unison beneath the snow,
Calling me to you with wild gesturings
Homeward into the howling woods, although
Thinking of your abiding spirit brings
Only a whiter absence to my mind,
Only whirled snow heaped up by whirled snow,
Only a fox whose den I cannot find.

Murder of Crows

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The murder of crows gathers in small groups… watching… waiting… for what must seem to them to be the perfect moment.

One by one, they fly in… deliver a short hypnotic speech, then proceed to pick at the ice that has formed on the sheep’s backs. Once loosened the ice is plucked from the sheep and carried off to the tree tops.
This has become a somewhat bizarre morning ritual, and has prompted the questions…
Are they thirsty? Hungry? Or could this peculiar behavior be caused by their fondness of dog food?