Glen Hill Farm: March 2016

Wait, was that it? Is winter over? With these warm temperatures this week, and the fact that I pulled a tick out of my bellybutton yesterday, it sort seems like it might be spring now? What a difference a year makes. Last year we were still buried under so much snow at this point. This year, the flowers are already appearing!

While this winter was remarkably milder than last year, I have to say that it was a bit more of a challenging year for us here on Glen Hill Farm. Last year, we had to deal with all that snow, and that was a pain in the neck, but we never once lost power. Amazing! Sadly, I can't say the same for this winter. We lost power about three times for long spells. We also had a pipe freeze in our upstairs bathroom and were without a hot shower for a few days.

And lastly, we had two main troublemakers on our hands:

Troublemaker One: The giant pine tree.
And Troublemaker Two: Our little goat, Cream.

First off, the pine tree. I love this tree. It is so cool. Huge. And such a big part of our landscape.

However, sadly, it is not behaving. We may not have had a lot of snow this year, but we certainly had some VERY windy storms. And there was one storm that was both snowy and windy. Our pine tree dropped many, many LARGE branches this during these winter storms. Luckily, no humans or animals were hurt (because I wouldn't let them near it). However I can't say the same for our barn. One of the large branches that fell put a hole in our barn's roof and damaged our chicken run fencing. Hmph. This is the same tree that, last year, dropped a giant branch on the barn ramp--where I had been walking not 10 seconds earlier. Very scary. Very dangerous. Our pine tree is officially on probation.

Lots of big branches down...

Damaged chicken run fencing...

The hole in our barn's roof, the chicken coop area...

The hole from the inside...

Catching the water as it came in through the roof...

Clean up time...

Now on to our second troublemaker: Cream. I had been warned that goats are troublemakers and escape artists, and Cream is proudly upholding that stereotype. :) In my last blog I wrote about how the goats jumped over their half walled-stall, into the next stall over. Well, we were able to catch this mischief on video after all and we figured out which goat was the ringleader. Ms. Cream. Watch Cream in action trying to escape here: Cream Jumping Up On Wall

We quickly put up some wire fencing to keep this girl down. I still catch her trying to jump up onto the windowsill. Crazy girl. (I call them troublemakers, but I mean it in a loving way. They really are fun and silly girls!)

Jonathan to the rescue! Thank you!...

Yes, Cream, this fencing is just for you!

She still jumps up on the windowsill.
Kit Kat would, too, but she's just not as good a jumper as Cream.
(Can you see Kit Kat trying to jump up in the picture below?)

Cream gave me another heart attack last week. That pesky pine tree also dropped a giant branch that broke the fence on the goats' ramp...

But we thought, no big deal--The big tented storage structure will keep the goats in anyway, right?

Um, wrong. Look where we found Cream:

(Can you see her? Look in the top left corner, on the roof!)...

And then, yes, she jumped off of that--about 15 feet down!-- to the unfenced side! (to the left!) Luckily, she was totally fine. Let's just say that this ramp fence got fixed immediately...