Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

A couple of days ago I finished a project I started in mid-December.  I saw on a Facebook page that someone had made little dolls like this, so I tried it as well.  Per Ellen's advice I modified it from what the other person had done, and I think they turned out super cute.  Gingerbread cookie dolls. Their smiles leave a great deal to be desired.  I wish I were more talented at doing faces.  But I figure younger children will probably end up with them, and usually they aren't too picky.  That is also why I didn't put the plastic safety eyes in them.  I realize one doesn't put a cherry on a real gingerbread cookie, or at least I have never seen any like that, but it makes a nice addition to a 3-dimensional doll.  I am hoping the little ties maybe resemble a little piece of that red rope candy. So these dollies will be packed away until Nov or December, to be taken to a Christmas/Craft Bazaar somewhere.  Now I am going to make more of the other...

 It is still well below freezing.  Bella and I have been making tracks in circles around the place here, doing circuits of the driveways with her on leash, or letting her run in the fenced garden off leash.  It is still super cold.  At almost 5 PM it is currently 8 degrees out.  This morning I think it was -1.  Ellen has taken her for walks and made some tracks, too.  We are all getting cabin fever...well, except Gary.  He has been making tracks of another sort; up and down the roads.  Gary has fielded numerous calls from people who don't have water for one reason or another.  Most of them he has advised heat lamps or heaters in their well-houses and hasn't heard from them again.  Presumably they thawed out and have water again.  Several people, including his aunt, have heat and water in their well houses, but no water in their actual houses, so the pipes are frozen up underneath the house somewhere.  I believe there are a...

Not much, but enough to make our morning walk enchanting.  I don't really know as Bella cared one way or the other about taking a walk in the snow, but she enjoyed herself as usual.  I enjoyed myself, too.  Snow makes familiar sights along the walk enchanting.   I wonder if it makes it more difficult for Bella to smell where the squirrels have been.   Every weed, every vine and tree are turned into a work of art, etched over with white. I see the above vine looped over on itself most every day we go down there, but seeing it covered in white makes it really stand out.  I think it's an old grape vine.  It would have to be old.  Gary had the cows down there in summers for close on to 20 years or more, and they wouldn't have allowed a new grapevine to grow.  In fact, since there haven't been cows down there for a couple of years now, there's  more and more vegetation taking over again.  Probably even poison ivy/poison oak, though ...

 The past 2 or 3 days we have had a "polar vortex" travel over us, with wintery temps and precipitation.  The temps just hovered a smidge above the freezing point, so what snow we got didn't stick. Several times I have heard or read somewhere that the native Inuit have multiple names for different types of snow.  I guess we do as well, to a certain extent, though for the most part our culture isn't as permeated with snow as theirs would be, I guess.  We have snow, sleet, slush...anything else?  I am sure I missed some. Yesterday when it started "snowing" here it was small, super dry pellets, like pictured above.  Gary called it a "hominy snow."  I have heard him use that term for it before, but had never bothered to look it up.  I'd always thought it was just local colloquialism, but it led me down a couple of rabbit trails looking up terms and definitions.   It actually originates from German; Graupel.  I copied and pasted the below fro...

Yesterday Ellen and I went outside and played for a good long time. After all the snow on the ground, the frigid temps (down to MINUS 18 degrees F one morning) and a cold, the forced shut-in time was producing cabin fever in us. I had to hang out laundry, too. It was sunny and breezy. Then Ellen said we needed to build a snowman. This means that *I* have to build it. So I set to work. I refused to build a 3 big ball snowman. I just started building a tall-ish column. I kept whacking handfuls of snow on it. Then something happened; I got a handful of snow here, and fistful there and it started to resemble something other than a snowMAN. Hmmm... So I just started building off of that; I didn't finish the head, the snow is melting too fast, and I just am too exhausted at the time to finish her. But today I went out and did some decorating for the sake of picture taking; All in all, I think the next snowfall that comes, I will try and do some other sculpture; this isn't ...

Three more inches last night. On top of the rest from Tues that hasn't really begun to melt yet. They are predicting flurries for most every day next week. Today I spent a great deal of time making Valentines for next Sunday afternoon's scheduled Valentine's party... a party which may or may not take place. Hopefully if it gets cancelled they will reschedule it for the next week. I'd be very disappointed after making almost 30 Valentine's. I stole the idea from sis in law, but that's alright, right? It involves cooking cornstarch. Fun stuff. We are starting to run low on supplies; especially in the fresh fruit department. Mom in law had someone with a 4WD pick up her medication. We may have to break out the old 4WD cow truck ourselves and take a trip to town. The trouble is when to do it. Just trying to get the chores done takes up most of the day. We didn't have to dump any milk the other day, but only by a hair's breadth, and by reschedulin...

Oh, yay! Yesterday we got about 12 inches of snow. In one place I measured 11 inches, in another 13, so we figure somewhere in between. Hubby had to get out his little bulldozer and clear our driveways and all. He had to doze his way out to the field and make paths for the 4-wheeler so he could do round up and get hay out to them. He had to doze his way down to the little heifers out in the woods so we could feed them. This time Ellen isn't so enchanted with snow. Just a bit ago, while we were out doing chores and she'd clambered and stumbled and slipped around, she said; "I hate snow." Poor kid. It's tough when you have short little legs. Not to mention that it's currently in the single digits out here, with a nippy wind blowing the index down below zero. But nothing will do but that she come out with me and then have one of us take her down to her grandma's place. Last night, before hubby'd been able to doze a 4-wheeler path down there, sh...

Got about 3 inches last night. I don't have any pics of it. I am sure you have seen pictures of snow before. I put the little snowy heifer as my title picture. She's pretty cute. That was from the snow last week. Don't feel sorry for this heifer; she's got shelter she could get in to if she so desired. Today we went down and got a close-to-calving heifer and brought her up with the dairy herd. You should have seen how frisky all the cows were. They were hopping around, snorting, tossing their heads, kicking up their heels. Just like kids on a snow day. They love the snow, as long as the temps don't get below zero, they do just fine. Ellen hasn't clamored for a snowman this time. But when it melts enough to get sticky we'll try to build a big one. Ellen has 2 imaginary friends now; Johnno and Jaynno. I hope you can figure out how to pronounce them from my spelling. My child WOULD choose unspell-able names for her imaginary friends. John-oh and...

Last night we got about 4 inches of snow. This means that, although it hasn't been cold enough for the ponds to freeze over and need chopping, it means that we have to shovel the snow out of the feed bunks before putting the feed in. This can be hazardous because you have any number of anxious bovines behind you crowding and shoving and pushing around to get to the bunks; whether you have put feed in there or not. They figure that since you are messing around in there you MUST have put something in there for them. If you are so lucky as to have charged into the corral and closed the gate before they came up you are doing well. Fortunately this morning the open heifers weren't up at their corral yet when I was shoveling the snow from the bunks, I was able to close the gate on the bull heifer corral before they showed up and the dry cows (there are only 8 of them instead of 27 or 28 and 17 respectively of the others) aren't that big of a problem. The neat thing about when...