Snow On the First Day of Winter

Today is the winter solstice, the first official day of Winter.  I think it is very fitting that we are having a good snowy day on this day!  (Today is also the day that some people think the world will end based on an old Mayan calendar, but I'm not even going there.  Maybe Y2K had some very credible voices, but a Mayan apocalypse?)  We had snow the end of October, but the next 7 weeks were fairly uneventful, weather-wise.  About half the nights have seen temperatures at the freezing mark but the first week of December was Spring-like with highs in the 60s.  Overall, a pretty calm ending to Fall.

And that brings us back to our snowy day today, the first day of Winter!

Dandelion still has not yet calved!  Chirstina, Simon, Timothy and I just got back from checking on her.  We gave her fresh hay and also put fresh hay down in the shelter for Gracie, Violet, and the two bull calves.  During the past week, Matthew, Christina and Simon have worked on putting up the outside walls of the shelter they roofed last month.  They got the walls up just in time for this bitter cold snowy wind today!  The children also took a few moments to enjoy the snow over there at that farm.

This is what the shelter looks like now!  Quite an improvement for the winter.  Before Matthew put the wood up, we had tarps up but I don't think we got any pictures of that phase.

Simon helped a lot getting the hay today.  Christina did also, but  she moved so fast that I did not get a picture of her carrying a bale.

Here's Dandelion warm and dry in the barn.  I tried to get pictures that showed how hard it was snowing, but it didn't work too well.

 

And here are the other cows enjoying the hay within their newly errected walls.

All that's left for the outside is the partial wall at the top of the front.  We are going to leave the rest of this wall open.  Matthew also plans on putting in a loft to store hay in the back half of the structure.  It's coming along beautifully!


Of course we had to take some time out for snow play!  I think the house has a majestic aura looking up at it from the road.

I think Timothy still likes his bike better than the sleds.

But he did go down a few times in the sleds.

Matthew and Simon finished today off by taking care of the pigs.  We still have the boar and gilt that survived from K & T Showpigs.  They are both still a mystery, so we have decided to keep them around awhile and see if they produce piglets that are any good.  They mated on December 13 which means we should see some piglets around April 9th.  We'll see.

The tarp had come loose that covers their feeder because of the severe wind we've had today, and their feeder was low enough for them to knock it over and spill feed into the snow/mud, so they definitely needed attention!  Matthew loaded 3 100 pound sacks of hog feed on his shoulders and poured them into the feeder.  I suggested that he put one sack on each shoulder and balance the other on his head, but I don't think he took my advice. 

The pictures they took did not come out too well in the dusky, snowy dimness, but I wanted to put them up anyway.