Homestead Life

Moving slow on drizzly Sunday morning.  about 33 degrees and a grey mist.  Patchy snow on the ground.

Have fires in both the kitchen range and the parlor stove.  Started the Parlor stove yesterday, and with a little (a lot of) help from my friends, a major reorganization got started…..

Now enjoying that the library and the Cedar Room, formerly know as Lorena’s Office have fewer piles of papers and other miscellanea laying about.  , and 4 rooms open and warm, as opposed to the two rooms that hunkered down in and tried to keep above 60 degrees during the big cold… down to about 13 degrees, but below freezing for a week or so.

Considered myself to be snowed in several days longer then most people, as I was unwilling to drive on the snowing/icy hills of either the middle fork or the Acme hill.  And I didn’t need to leave as I had taken the snow forecasts seriously and was well prepared…. like for a month or 3, aside from the dwindling bottle of half and half…..for tea.

what did I do?  I spend a lot of time the first few days getting the snow off the solar panels, the Costco shed (full of tools) and two greenhouses.  Marshal and neighbor Dave shoveled the porch roof.  Marshal with first 4″; Dave with 17″ and then another 4″ with a leaf blower.

The worse thing about this storm for me was that all the snow fell at night. 17 +/- inches in one night, and I only got occasional glimpses, using a flashlight out the window.  And then using a squeegee with a 4′ handle to reach as high I as I could on the solar panels (most of the area not held up by the generator shed roof.  And using it to bump the inside of the roof of the Costco tool shed to bounce the snow off it, to keep the shed from collapsing, as another one did a couple of years ago.

And the old garden shed/Costco shed, covered with plastic…I could only get about half of the front side of the roof cleared of snow, but it survived.

Then down to the new red-greenhouse, now full of wintering over kale and chard.  The snow was about 11 inches on the sides, which came off quite easily.  I couldn’t reach the about 2 feet on the roof, so had to hope the tomato house was strong enough, which it fortunately was.  on the south side, the snow had already slid off the upper slant.

Both mutts would come out with me on these rounds, but Cuca would hang out on either our porch or Meadow Lark’s porch with a view.  However Chico was right at my heels the whole way, even tho the snow was near as high as him.

For meals, the raided the freezer every day or two, and would come out with half a dozen containers.  One was usually blackberries.  The rest leftovers that I have frozen, or veggies from the garden.  The last veggie was broccoli.

The rest of my time was spend learning Word Press, where we are setting up the new People’s Guide to Mexico website.  Having to learn how everything works, as this ‘new’ website is blog based and lives in the nether regions.  Hopefully we’ll be able to put the new site up and go Live in a couple of days.

Slowly the snow melted, way slower than Bellingham and the lower areas.

When the roads finally cleared, I went out to the PO and library.  And then, because the roads were totally free of snow, I headed on into town for a few errands, dog food and a harness for Chico.  The Coop, mostly dairy — half and half, yogurt, cottage cheese, feta for salads and popcorn.  Trader Joe’s for tp, mashed avocados (to freeze one package) and pomegranate seeds.

Had to go out the next couple of days also, but got to stay in for the weekend.  Tomorrow, out again for a car checkup….

Already longing for the good old days, when I was snowed in.