Glen Hill Farm: Brrr....

Snowbound!

Let me apologize. Remember a few weeks ago in my 'Blizzard of 2015' blog where I said that the blizzard was 'lovely' and I even gave it a 'two thumbs up'? Well, clearly Mother Nature misunderstood what I meant! She obviously thought that since I enjoyed that first little blizzard, that I would also love to have a blizzard every week since. Oops. My bad.

While I still do love winter and the snow is beautiful and all that, I would be just fine if Mother Nature took a few weeks off from snow and maybe even sent some warmer weather our way! I think almost 72 inches of snow is plenty for now. So sorry for the misunderstanding everyone! (It's probably up to 100 inches by now, I've just stopped paying attention at this point.)

And just to make it clear...I am NOT complaining about the snow. Truly, as long as our electricity stays on (it has) and our roof is not leaking (it's not) I refuse to complain about the snow. Yes, it makes driving more difficult (I risk my life every time I leave my driveway because I just can't see oncoming traffic over the snowbanks). It causes more snow days (*whispers* I actually love snow days as much as my kids do!). And it generally slow things down, but I kind of like it that way.

Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of how much snow we've gotten over the past month:

So pretty! I love winter.

Just beautiful!

Um, okay, thanks! That's plenty of snow.

What I meant was you can stop the snowing now. Thanks.

Feeling a bit trapped.
It's very sad when all the firewood is buried under all the snow. :(
I think I should be able to take down the Christmas decorations sometime around Easter.

Now if you live/work in Boston and are dealing with ridiculous traffic/parking, no MBTA, etc. you guys have the right to complain all you want. But for me, we're getting through it out here in the 'burbs, and making some memories in the process. (I never thought I'd let my kids jump off the roof of our house, but hey, we have had 72 inches of snow, so it was practically up to the second floor anyway! So we all jumped. It was fun! And just for the record, it was before the Mayor asked everyone to stop doing it.)

Ryan mid-jump

Jonathan has taken the brunt of the snow removal job. He's logged over 10 hours on our little tractor trying to plow our very long driveway and paths to the barn. It has not been easy. Our tiny tractor plow would do great with say three inches of snow, but it wasn't designed to move two feet of fluffy snow. It's like digging in dry sand at the beach....He pushes it to the side and it just falls back onto the driveway. I think he's done a great job. We can get our cars out and that's what really matters. But God forbid we have an emergency...I'm pretty sure there's no way a firetruck or ambulance could get down our driveway. Eek. So we're just keeping our fingers crossed that we won't need them anytime soon. Hmmm, maybe we should stop jumping off the roof for fun, just to be sure.

He's also done an amazing job trying to keep our house from developing ice dams. So far, so good.

Be careful up there!

The kids and I have been having fun with all those snow days!

Making memories

Tunnels!

Even Cooper is enjoying the snow!

Below is a picture of our chicken coop roof. Yes, the snow literally reaches the roof! That's Cooper on the roof with Ben. Jessie preferred to stay on the "ground" which is actually atop at least 3 feet of snow!

Snow, snow, snow

This is just to give you perspective of this place without the snow.

The animals are doing fine with all the snow. The snow is literally over the dogs' heads, so they aren't venturing very far. Which is good since during the last blizzard, our electric dog fence started beeping which indicates that somewhere along our property there has been a break in the fence. (Maybe a tree fell along the property line? Too much snow to tell right now, but since most of the electric dog fence is above ground, it's very possible that it got damaged by a snow related problem.) We had to just turn it off to stop the beeping noise, so right now the electric fence isn't working. (Don't tell the dogs!) Like I said, we're so snowed in that there's not many places that the dogs could escape from right now. (Except the driveway...They could totally run down the driveway, no problem, but they haven't figured that out yet, so mum's the word!)

Dogs, don't you dare go over the snowbanks! Wait, did someone tell you about the broken fence?!

Cooper, I'm keeping my eye on you!

One downside to all this snow is that since the dogs are only going where we've shoveled paths, that is also where they are pooping. Yes, right where we're walking. So, our beautiful winter wonderland is slowly turning into a poop minefield. And Cooper continues to graffiti his yellow pee all over that pretty white snow. Sigh. I swear he has started signing names in the snow. Last week he wrote "Greg". This week it said "Wendy". I kid you not.

Is it just me or does that say Wendy?
Just me?
Okay, never mind.

Welcome to our home! Watch your step!
Gross.

The chickens are kind of snowed in themselves. Even though I've shoveled a small path for them to go outside into their run, they really aren't interested in venturing out of their coop much. Which is totally fine, but the problem is dealing with all their poop. Chickens poop a lot. So I've had extra duty cleaning up all the poop now accumulating inside the coop.

An interesting cold temperature discovery that I've made this winter is that chicken poop freezes! It becomes hard as a rock and freezes right onto the poop boards or floor. As long as I can give it a hard whack to chip it off the boards, it's actually easier to pick up frozen. I've also been sure to add lots of extra bedding to the poop boards which helps make it easier to remove. I must admit that I actually prefer picking up frozen poop to their regular mushy poop. (See, a bright side to the situation!)

Mounds of snow in their run.
They won't step outside unless I put down hay.

My biggest problem is that now that I have more poop to pick up, my poop bucket is filling up much faster than normal. Usually, I only need to dump it out about once a week, but lately, I need to dump it at least twice a week. Since I can't actually get to our usual poop dumping area because of the ridiculous amounts of snow, I've had to start a new temporary chicken poop dumping area. It had to be somewhere that I could walk to and somewhere that the dogs couldn't reach. The only place that fit those qualifications right now in this ridiculous arctic wasteland that we are living in was....along our driveway! Niiiice! Welcome to Glen Hill Farm! Here is our chicken poop! (Yuck, so embarrassing. Not an ideal situation.) Of course in the spring, I bet all the plants (and poison ivy) growing along our driveway will be thriving better than ever with this bonus fertilizer!

Welcome! Please ignore the 'fertilizer' on your right.

Sorry for all the poop talk, but sadly poop is a very big part of living on a farm!

These poor hens got startled, flew up and landed in the snow.
They were kinda stuck there, and so I did what any good mother would do:
I grabbed my camera and took a picture....
and THEN I rushed over to help them out.

The temperatures here have been dipping below zero. The chickens are doing great keeping themselves warm, but one especially cold morning I went out to collect eggs and found one egg that had totally frozen! The yolk and white had frozen solid, expanded and cracked open the shell. So now I need to be sure to go out to collect eggs much more often because it doesn't take very long for an egg to freeze in weather like this.

Frozen egg. :(

The cold temps don't seem to affect egg production. This week we collected the biggest egg we've ever seen! It was HUGE! (Poor chickie who laid it. It was either Daffodil or Reese.) And yes, it was a double yolk!