Treacherous

Well, with temperatures staying from 0-20 and wind chills in the negative numbers, the 3 inches of packed snow and sleet has turned into solid ice.  

It may look pretty but it is treacherous.  Yesterday, Joe fell 5 times trying to get around to feed and bust water tanks.  Thankfully, he was not hurt.  It took me 3 times as long to feed the dogs last night.  The goats are preferring to hunker down under an old barn 1/2 a mile from the house.  

And when you have to walk with baby steps, everything takes longer.  

 

Aftermath

The precipitation wasn’t as bad as expected. We got about 3 inches of snow followed by some sleet then freezing rain. 

We had some wind gusts from the opposite direction as usual. My winter porch decoration took a tumble. I think the glass table top broke but the pot may be ok. 

The livestock are not too happy.  I think the freezing rain has made everyone miserable. And now the temperatures aren’t supposed to make it out of the teens for at least the next week.  So now we will have 3 inches of frozen packed snow with a layer of ice on top to negotiate.  At least we haven’t lost power yet. 
 

Rainbows and Snow

Virginia brought Sadie and Allie over for a visit before the weather got bad.  They had lunch, play Barbies and then Sadie wanted to do a craft.  She has seen me go to the computer and google kid craft so that is what she wanted to do.  She picked out a rainbow.  

This only required paint (I used Wrangler's old tempera panint), paint brushes, a paper plate. glue and cotton balls.  

Sadie's turned out beautiful.   She was very careful to keep the colors separated.   

Allie's was beautiful too.  She had a totally different technique that involved blotting everything with a paper towel.  We learned when you mix all the colors, you get brown.  

And then the snow started.  

 So far, it looks like the cold will be worse than the snow.  But it still remains to be seen.  

Hit And Miss

This morning I went out with Joe to move the 10 cows out of the horse field. 

Unfortunately, they were at the top of the hill.  But the morning view was a nice bonus.  

We drove them down the hill, 

and into the next field.  That was a hit. 

But Joe had noticed a goat not acting right and wanted to catch her so we could deworm her.   Not acting right did not include not being able to run fast.  That was a miss. 
 

Calm Before The Storm

Snowmageddon 2026 is being predicted for this weekend. 

As you can tell from the map, we don’t know a whole lot yet.  

But we could use a little moisture. The dry weather has been great for Joe to be able to get around the farm with the tractor feeding. But it hasn’t been so good to keep the water troughs full.   This one is in the horse field. The 10 cows from the cattle drive earlier are now here. They will have to be moved tomorrow so hopefully the trough will fill up some before the arctic blast freezes everything solid. 

On my way down the driveway going to work this morning I had to stop and take a picture of the beautiful sunrise. It looks like the calm before the storm  

I also have an update on my shades. I think they look nice from the outside.  But I needed them last month when we had a crew putting a new roof on the house. 

I will have to brag on the double sided tape I got to attach the fabric to the metal rod.   It actually came from Dollar General (I had a $3 off $15 that was good all month not just on Saturday). There were rave reviews. So far it is working great.   I would highly recommend it if you need strong double sided tape. 

 

Moving and Blow Out

Just our yearly cattle drive from the rented farm to our farm at the house and our farm up the road. 

Once again Joe had done all the prep work and I just had to show up.  Ten cows headed down the road to the house farm. 

There was a little bit of roadside grazing. 

And six went a mile up the road to our other farm. 

 Then on a different subject, Mike borrowed the trailer to take his beef to be processed. On the way there one of the trailer tires had a blow out on the interstate. He was able to change it and made it to the processor.  But it looks like we might need four new tires.  Sorry that happened but glad no one was hurt. 

DIY Roller Shades

The last time I pulled down the cheap vinyl roller blinds in my bedroom, they smelled so bad I had to leave the room.  It is hard to tell what sort of toxic fumes they were emitting.  I had a thought about ordering some custom shades but that thought disappeared when I saw the price.

  

Let’s see if this could be a successful DIY.  I had a piece of fabric that was large enough but I didn’t like how bold the pattern was.  Solution, use the back side.  I took the existing shade and threw away the vinyl but kept the rod.  There was a lot of measuring and ironing.  I used stitch witchery to bind the edges.

I also changed the shades from inside mount to outside mount.  Because I had wooden valances that I didn’t want to take down, it required a lot of tools to finally attach the hardware. 

Tada!  With the sun coming through you still see the pattern but it is very muted. 

I need to check from the outside tomorrow and see what it looks like from that direction.  I am not quite finished. I need to get some doubled sided tape to attach the fabric to the pole.  I just used scotch tape to test it out.   And I need to get something to use as the bottom bar.  So far, I have just used stuff I already had.  The same thing on Blinds.com for the three I just made, would  have been over $1000.  I am counting this as a DIY success.