What about those mules?

So many folks want to know how my mules fair in weather like this. These animals have lived since birth on the farm and have always lived outdoors. If you understand the way my land lays, you will know that we have nooks and crannies where the winds don't blow. The mules have figured that out long ago and they are free to go seek shelter or stand in the winds.

With that said, here are the girls digging and browsing in the summer pasture after the first snowfall. 

I thought it would be nice for them to have something to do rather than stand around and look bored in the winter pasture. So I opened the gates to one of the summer pastures.

Their heated water is down by the house along with their hay feeders.

Feeding in the winter pasture [this is in front of the house]:

When they are done there, they head to the woods to browse on items they don't eat in the summer. Apparently multiflora rose leaves are tasty in the winter as well as other dried out weeds.

They are bit more exposed to the weather in this area as it is nearly on the ridge. But it is their choice. The browse, they constantly move and graze just like their wild ancestors.

This is a shot from this past summer in the are where they can browse right now. 

And...

when they feel like moving, they move into the woods and stand together in their own little herd.

At 8AM and at 4PM they show up in the paddock at the front of the house and stare at the house until I appear with loads of hay.

I check them more than once a day in cold weather. I stick my hand under their snow-covered coats to feel their body heat. And it is there!

Well, time to get going. So many adventures from yesterday and more for this weekend. I just got texts from my new neighbor asking if I knew of anyone that could help get his truck out of the ditch up on the ridge.

I gave him names of those who could probably help him and one is a neighbor farmer who is also runs a township plow.

Last night all plows were pulled off the roads due to poor visibility and dangerous conditions.

It looks like we will see the sunlight today for a bit while Mother Nature does her thing to remind us about what winter is like.

Foraging again in the rain

My Grandfather Fred used to say silly things like. "It's raining, let's have a picnic!"

As a kid I thought he was crazy. Who wanted to be out in the rain?
Right?

He'd follow up that comment with an explanation.
"You can't farm in the rain, you can't work in the garden in the rain, so what else is there to do? Why a picnic of course!"

It usually meant that we'd pack up in mom's station wagon and go visiting to other farms and relatives. It was always a mystery to me that we'd show up somewhere and the grown ups would gather around the kitchen table and talk while the kids went into another room to play.

However now that I am the grown up and I see rain coming down. I put on rain-gear and go for a walk.
My husband looks at me as though I've grown two heads and a third eye ball.
"Walk in the rain, are you nuts?"

Oh well. Not really.
"I can't dig in the garden, or do much else," I reply. "I may as well go looking for parsnips and leeks!"

And off I go into a very light rain.

I find parsnips at 'The Beach' easy to pull. I like keeping them out of a section of the neighbor's creek so that we don't have to deal with parsnip burns if the kids come down to wade and play in the creek later on in the year.
Besides, they are good to eat.

The leek patch needs a bit of thinning out so they have room to grow larger. Leeks come up, and after they wilt, disappear into the ground until next spring. They have a nice light onion flavor to them and go well with sauteed parsnips.

 Note the plastic bag over the camera. It is a plastic sleeve often used as a vet sleeve...
It covers the camera quite nicely and keeps it from getting wet.

I made my way back home and stopped to look admire the Mayflowers in the rain.

It may even have been fun to find an overhang of rocks to sit under and enjoy a picnic.

Don't you think?

Diggin it

Well with temperatures rising overnight we had the deluge of snow slides off from the roof tops of our buildings. So Christmas morning I saw the forecast was for heavy rain and more melt...then freezing.

So it was time to get out the shovels and start digging out gates to different pens and paddocks. If I didn't, we'd have to use ice picks to get Mica's gate open in the next 24 hrs.

Next it was onto the young Dexter's gate. The skid steer got stuck in a real soft spot and we had to dig it out. The cows and this year's calves looked on.

We got fresh large bales to those who needed it and today we'll probably put out a corn fodder bale for them also.

The rain and winds swept in yesterday afternoon with thunder and lightening.

As hubby and I sat and watched a really odd movie called The Lobster, we heard the rest of the snow come storming off from our roof valleys.

Morris jumped off from the couch and ran around the house stiff legged and growling.

I have to admit, it was an unnerving sound.

Christmas is over and I'm ready to take on the rest of winter.