Isn't Spring Great?

Spring is so awesome because of the flowers!

This is the apple tree in front of our house. It smells SO good, and it's so pretty!

Spring has finally Sprung!

The strawberries are doing great! 

Here is what they looked like today. It rained yesterday, so they are happy and growing.

In the lower left, you can see chocolate mint. I planted it in a sunken bed originally, but alas, it has escaped and is slowly creeping about. That's fine. It generally doesn't hurt other things and it smells good when you step on it.

In the center of the photo, far right, is thyme. Thyme is a slow creeping ground cover that is used herbally in cooking and medicines.  It does best in rocky type areas. Three winters in Wisconsin and finally success!

This is one of our pear trees. It is some kind of oriental pear. The pears are small and sort of resemble lemons. It is always the first tree to flower.  Most of the other trees have colorful cracking buds, but this is the only one open so far.

TOLD ya winter wasn't over yet!

Yesterday, we got one (hopefully) last blast from Ol' Man Winter. Potentially, we could have more snow, and I remember a few years ago we had frost on May 31st, but lets just cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Break-up on the lake

We drove down to the lake today to check out the ice. In late March. the ice starts to break up. 

If you have been following the news, you would know we had 10 tornados touch down here in northeast Wisconsin. Super high winds for days ravaged this part of the state. When winds like that whip across the lake during break up, beautiful, ugly things happen.

The ice starts to pile. Beautiful from a distance.

One problem people find, however, is when the wind is right, sometimes the ice piles onto the shore and takes out docks, decks, and the occasional sun porch. 

Aren't those $500,000 lake lots great?

So Much for Winter

Oh, the cold wind blows.

Hark! Grass! The cold wind is gone.

It's a sham, just wait.

Why do I farm.

Why do I farm.

Because I like it.

This cold, wet spring morning, I notice many things.

I see the first blades of grass poking through the mud just after sunrise.

I hear the cry of baby goats as I bring a bucket of water to their pen. They sound suspiciously like human babies.

I smell the moisture in the air as the coming rain rolls over the lake.

I taste the hay chaff floating on the wind as it blows past my face.

I feel the calm yet excited attention I am given by prancing, dancing rabbits in their cages as I pass by with their feed.

Yes, this is Spring in Wisconsin.

Here in Wisconsin..Spring doesn't mean WARM weather!

If you live in the middle, zone 5, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and such, you should have tulips and crocuses, and other beautiful delights. In Wisconsin? hardly.

Just last week, we had a baby blizzard.  After hours of feeding and watering and shoveling, this is what you get in return. 

You KNOW its cold when you have to stand about and wait for the zippers on your coveralls to thaw enough to take them off.

The next day, beautiful, freezing and sunny!  What does that mean in Wisconsin? Danger from above!

When the sun shines bright,

Stay away from the buildings

You might lose your head

For days, we listen to the ice cascade down in thundering sheets.

The later it gets in the day, the sheets inch closer and closer to the edge, and when they go, they sound like a freight train.

Sometimes, they don't quite come off, and freeze that way over night, just to begin again the next day.

Hoar Frost Means Spring is Coming!

Hoar Frost? What in the world is that?
Hoar frost (also called radiation frost or hoarfrost or pruina) refers to the white ice crystals, loosely deposited on the ground or exposed objects, that form on cold clear nights when heat losses into the open skies cause objects to become colder than the surrounding air.


There, a definition copied straight from wikipedia. Hoar frost happens around here when we are coming into pre-spring thaw. We get up in the morning, and it is especially warm for as frozen as everything is. Usually accompanied by interesting fog formations. Following are pictures taken just a few mornings ago of hoar frost and the fog.

                                                       These two are just prior to sunrise.

                                                 The next two are just as the sun is peeking.

                                                                    WHAM! THE SUN.

                                                                         Hoar Frost

What a beautiful day out on the lake..NOT!

My dear, dear husband decided today (well, actually a Friday ago), that instead of driving around the lake to get to OshKosh, we would drive straight across..EEKK!  The lake, Lake Winnebago, of course, is frozen. The ice is reported at 20 inches thick today. 

This is as we are coming down the hill to one of the many off ramps onto the water.  You can see the 'plowed road', on the ice.  There are actually two roads. You can just see the second one off to the right.

Uuugg. This doesn't look so hot. Maybe we should go back. Ack! He says, its fine.  The metal tracks are actually laid from shore onto the ice, over a large crack that had formed. #1 rule when driving on the lake? Take OFF your seatbelt!  #2 rule? Look out for the holes.

This is just off shore.  We chose the right hand road, and later switched to the left hand one. 

Notice the Christmas trees?  These are actually mile markers. The various fishing clubs around the lake are responsible for 'ice maintenance', so to speak. They plow the roads, and monitor other things. They also take a Christmas tree collection each year.  The members drive out on the lake and bore holes in the ice every 1/10th of a mile along the main plowed roads.  At the one mile out point, they put a very large tree. At the two mile out point, two trees together, three miles, three trees together and so on. Each club usually goes out 3-5 miles and meets up near the middle with the club from that area on the other side.  This way, if a person gets turned around, or snow blinded, they only have to find a tree line to help get back.  After sturgeon season is over, when the ice starts to first get 'funny', the clubs remove the trees, rather than let them fall to the bottom.

At this point we were so far from nowhere, all you could see was ice and snow. The road was very rough in some places, and it was a very sunny day. This caused a lot of surface melting, so there were places on the road with standing water. This was VERY scary, as you just can't see what is under there. At one point, we left the road due to a large dark spot of standing water that looked too scary to drive through. We almost got stuck several times, and I really had to go. You know, GO!

So here is the last photo. This was taken just after exiting the lake. Whew! It was a nice experience, really, but I never want to do it again. 

Three days later, the news said 3 trucks went through the ice and one man died. Again, I say... I never want to drive across the lake again.

How was your blizzard?

It started snowing here sometime early Tuesday. Schools were shut down for 2 days. The wind picked up and the fight was on. We had 40+ mile an hour winds for 48 hours or so.

You can see in this photo, our mailbox seems to be having trouble holding position.

The picture above is the garden and the picture below is the farm down the street. These were taken on Tuesday as the sun was setting. That was the beginning of the worst night. Bitter cold wind, below freezing temperatures, and heavy snow fall (sideways mind you) all night long.

On Wednesday morning, the wind subsided for a few hours. Just enough time for us to shovel paths to the animals. We actually shoveled, with Chris in a skid loader from about 6:30 am until just before dark. The cows were in 2 feet of snow, all over and it all had to be moved to get to their feeders.

This is some of them, patiently waiting for paths to be shoveled so they could get to their hay.  When the wind picks up, they tend to group together and turn away from the wind.  The snow melts on their warm coats, and then solidifies into chunks of ice like armor.

The picture above, I took off the back deck. On the right, you can see the corner of the smoke house. That drift ran from the front of the goat runs, past the smoke house, across the back yard and connected to the edge of the house. It was so tall, the dog couldn't get over it. Measured from the dirt, just shy of 5 feet.
The picture below is the back garage door. We had to shovel from the yard to get to it. The drift almost completely covered the door. There was no getting it open from the inside!

Then, the wind picked up again, and the fight resumed. Unfortunately, tragedy struck. We lost 2 animals in that storm..a small cow and a young steer. It was terribly upsetting to find them the next morning, buried in the drifts. We have noticed, over the years, that when the wind picks up like this, the animals tend to stop eating until the storm subsides. A cow that doesn't eat can freeze to death. Their 4 compartment stomach is a giant fermentation vat.  It keeps them warm from the inside out.  The same holds true for goats. We suspect that may have been the cause of their deaths.
Farming isn't always fun and games. The weather gets nasty, and sometimes the animals just can't take it. The two we lost were hereford crosses.  Not a breed that typically does well in really nasty weather.
That is one reason we focus on the scottish highlands. They were bred for weather like this. Transitioning away from the more 'fragile' beef breeds is a better choice for grass-based farms that live in areas with harsh weather. Its a step-by-step process.

This picture shows two of our highland cows in the wind as the sun was setting on the second day. They seem to not mind the storm at all.  If you look really close in front of the tree line, you can see snow chunks blowing sideways.  Photos just never do justice to the true ferocity of the wind here.

On the morning of the third day, the wind was still going strong. It died down, stopped and the sun came out by mid day. The picture above, I took before I went in for the evening. The temperature dropped and froze all the snow stiff. This was the path to the greenhouse. I thought it looked really cool.

And below is a picture of the greenhouse itself. This picture I am posting so the people of HT can see what one looks like, as we have been discussing them for a while.