The wind is howling around the house, snow blowing everywhere. I don’t know if the wind is pushing another bout of extreme cold or maybe it will bring mild weather. Likely more cold as we just had a tiny warm spell in our persistently cold winter. But as the days are getting longer and February is making way for March the hope for some warmer weather seems slightly more realistic…well, at least that’s what I’m telling myself!
And I have extra reason to be looking forward to spring this year because…WE ARE FINALLY MOVED OUT TO THE FARM!!! It is very exciting! And with Emma headed toward 18 months (by springtime) she’ll be able to have more fun outside too (running around, digging in dirt, picking mommy’s favorite flowers…)
So many plans, I’m sure I won’t be able to get it all done. I have to keep reminding myself that we will be living here longer than just one year and that I’ll have to save some things for the years in the future!
But one thing I really want to do is chickens, especially laying hens. I’ll have a lot of work to do before I can actually go out and buy chicks and maybe I won’t have eggs till next spring, but the journey will be great. I am going to make sure that my chickens don’t succumb to the forces of nature this time! Or at least not if I can help it!
I hope to convert some old wooden granary or corner of a barn into some sort of coop that will be warm enough so that winter doesn’t rob them of their extremities. For now I’d like their laying box in the coop and then have a little chicken sized door so they can walk out if the weather is nice in the winter. And in the summer I’m planning on using the flock net (which is a portable net fencing specifically made for poultry that can be hooked up to a fence energizer and thus powered up) so they can be out on pasture and eat lots of bugs without being snatched up by the fox family that lives beside our yard.
I would also love to grow some tomatoes. I’m not sure yet where, but there must be some patch of ground somewhere where we could start a bit of a garden.
On to a different topic…here’s a little behind the scenes look at me writing this blog: somehow I find it hard to write anything while having a little kiddo crawling around all over me, or wanting ‘up’, or wanting ‘ju’(ice), or she’ll bring me a ‘boo’(k) to read to her. Emma is a pretty good little girl but she’s still very busy. It sure does make me wonder how other people manage anything with more kids, let alone how I will manage anything if one day there should be more!
In any case, this winter I am able to do this awesome job in town here: cooking lunch for the daycare kids. I go from 10am to 1pm, cook lunch, shop, do dishes, and prepare snacks. AND I can take Emma with me, which is great! So by 9:30 she already starts bugging me to brush her ‘tee’(th) and ‘GO!’ She loves going to the daycare and playing with all her friends. We have lunch there (Emma eats amazingly well surrounded by other eating children!) and then we run a few town errands (like get the mail) and head home. By this time Emma is pretty wiped out and she almost always falls asleep on the short 5 minute drive from town to the farm. I carefully pick her up out of her car seat, get her jacket off and lay her down in her little bed for a nap. Sometimes she will just go right back to sleep and sometimes she needs a bit of a nurse to doze back off but one way or another she ends up snoozing in her bed.
Yay! Time for me to run downstairs and get a few things done. I chase Millie off the easy chair in the living room (yet again! We are trying to train her to stay OFF the furniture, but she thinks she is the Queen of Sheeba and that the biggest, comfiest, chair in our whole house belongs entirely to her alone. Then one day when she forgot herself and growled at Wayne when he went to sit down, we decided that that was the end of that and she would have to learn to sleep in her own bed which has a perfectly cozy fluffy blanket in it that I regularly wash! Spoiled dog!) I peer at the chair that Millie just vacated…yup, sure enough! Dog hair. And I hate her short prickly dog hair sticking into everybody’s clothes. So I pull out the vacuum, thank God that Emma is sleeping upstairs and I can actually turn on the vacuum without her waking up, and hastily suck up all the dog hair. And while I’m at it I do the floor too. Put the vacuum away. Sweep the kitchen floor (which also seems harder to do with some little munchkin running criss-cross through my dirt). Think about what to make for supper and get that started (like get potatoes peeled and diced and sitting in a pot of water ready to turn on for mashed potatoes). Quickly clean up the peelings. Decide which one of my ‘quiet time’ jobs I should tackle today. Decide maybe I should really try to write a blog finally. Start up my computer. Pour myself a tall glass of water (because sometimes I forget to drink and then I get dehydrated and headachy). Check the weather. Check my mail. Open word document. Start writing blog. It takes me about 20 minutes to get into the flow of things. I get a paragraph done. Emma wakes up. And one and a half whole hours have passed by in the blink of an eye and I feel like I didn’t manage a thing…until I write it all down for you here and discover that it wasn’t that bad after all! And needless to say this blog took me two or three sessions to complete so if you feel like the ‘flow’ is a bit choppy as you’re reading it is because the ‘flow’ was kinda choppy as I’m writing!
Right now I’m happily clicking away. It is evening and I’m feeling content. Emma is sleeping and everything is good.
I go back to the beginning of my writing and wonder how something that takes all of three minutes to read could possibly take three sessions of anything to write…Oh well!
I hope to be able to blog about chickens and green grass soon!