Getting ready for winter

Winter coming always inspires some crazy hoarding thing in me; it has to be an ancient instinct.  I want my cupboards and hayloft full.   I start buying groceries to pack the pantry, butchering for the freezer, canning and baking with frenzy.   Now we have been stranded in winter for a few days, unable to get out, but we have never been anything near starving because of it.  Just the eggs our chickens produce each day would feed us-until their feed ran out anyway.

 We bought hay this week and were lucky to find decent hay at a good price just down the road from us.  Our barn is very full now with just little paths to let Steve get his wheelchair around.  We used to put the hay up in the loft of the barn where there is plenty of room, but it’s quite a chore lifting it up there without a hay elevator and neither of us is able to do it anymore.  And I as the only one who can get up the loft steps and throw it down can barely make the climb up those steep steps anymore.  So we stack the hay in the front of the barn, where it makes everything very crowded until the stacks get eaten down a bit.  Lily and Chance are working on that part.

The little wild kittens love it though. They have moved out of their groundhog hole under the propane tank into holes between the bales of hay.  They sure do give me a start when they pop out of there though.  They are getting big- they look good and healthy from all the cat food we are feeding them.  But they are still as wild as can be and run when they see us.

 Steve just went out in his electric chair because the rain stopped and we heard there will be high winds as the day clears off.  We are putting a plastic roof and walls over the outside chicken run to give them more room this winter and he’s worried the wind may sail off some of what he’s started.   However there isn’t much he can do about it I think.  The turkeys saw him coming and followed him all the way to the gate, squawking and yelling at him for food, trailing after his electric chair.  They are getting big and I am wondering how I am going to catch them for butchering in December.  They still won’t roost in the barn at night and go high up in the pine tree where I can’t reach them.

 So far we haven’t had a day when the hoses to the barn have been frozen all day.  I hate hauling water in buckets.  I dread the day when we will have to lock the chickens and ducks in and bring the horses over to the north pasture where we can feed and water them from the barn.  They use the back part of the barn as a run in shelter and we only have to shovel one path to the barn to feed everyone.

 

This weekend looks like it will be cold but sunny and hopefully we’ll get the major job- enclosing the chicken run done.  We still have house storm windows to put on and I need to cover some of the main barn windows with plastic again and well - there is still a ton of things to do before real winter sets in.  I hope it gives us a while longer.