Snow, Cold Snap, and Welcome to 2018

We are in the midst of a cold snap with lots and lots of lake effect snow. Our farmstead is around 20 miles south of Erie, Pennsylvania–which, if you didn’t know, just got hit with crazy record-breaking snowfall since Christmas eve. I believe they are up to around 7 feet of total accumulation.

Thankfully, at our house, we’ve had just over 2 feet, which is at least manageable. The temperatures though? I don’t think we’ve been out of the teens for about two weeks, and the forecast doesn’t look promising for much better.

This means that though we finally installed our much-coveted water line in our barn, I’m back to hauling buckets of warm water. Goats frequently won’t drink cold water in such frigid temperatures, and I like to check on everyone and rotate frozen buckets and water bottles. I’m very grateful for hats and gloves and warm boots.

I’m also wishing that we had gotten our wood stove inspected this year. We have good ol’ fashioned baseboard heat via a boiler in the basement, but there’s just something about crackling wood in a fire when the weather is like this… it warms you in a way furnaces and boilers just can’t. Maybe next year we’ll use it.

I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful Christmas holiday. Ours was blissfully uneventful and full of laughter with friends and family. I really couldn’t have asked for better. Here’s hoping for an equally positive start to 2018!

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P.S. I’m going to be experimenting with the types of posts I make here. I’ve gone back and forth over the years between more memoir or journal-type posts, versus purely informational articles. I think for now, partly in the interest of flexing my writing muscles and writing more overall, that I’m going to post a little bit of both. I hope you’ll comment on my posts and let me know what you think and prefer.

Mike and I have also been batting around the idea of starting either a podcast or a YouTube channel related to the things going on at the farmstead. I don’t know if we’ll pull it off, but if we do I’ll make sure to link it up.