Category: Weather Station Records

End of February Update.

It is definitely still winter here at the farm. We have good chances of snow for most of the coming week. Looks from the weather radar that whatever does come will likely have to form, as nothing closer to the west coast seems to be heading our way. It was warm today, though! We got up to 38F according to our weather station.

The SDR Radio I got the other day worked as expected. I got it running that day and played around with it, then delivered the second one to the desktop computer upstairs but did not yet set that one up. It’s fascinating how it can read or see the whole spectrum, and portions of it visible at once to tell where different signals are and have a hint to what kind they are. FM Radio signals are amazing, especially where they have digital encoding on both sides of the frequency. Even stations without that digital encoding are amazingly powerful compared to the rest of the spectrum. I will have to work on reception and an improved arial.

The tractor reached 200 hours yesterday. That’s just shy of five months! I cannot believe we are coming up to five months of ownership already! It still seems new to me. Most of its work here has bene snow clearing, but as soon as the weather breaks to spring, I think it will see a total shift! I may move big snow piles into the orchard just to get the trees started for the year. I may have to move a lot of hay off the garden and start it for tilling. I want that space tilled four or more times prior to planting in May and June. There will be post holes to dig, too. I am going to have to reset some fencing and clear some old areas out. Then there is the firewood. I don’t expect to muck about with that this year, since I want to be two years stored by autumn, and since I want to have a load of wood to work with. I hope to see this whole area of my chores severely altered to what it has been in previous years.

I got the second GoPro camera that I have been thinking about. If I am going to do a YouTube channel, then this setup I have is good enough to do it with. I would benefit from a lavalier mic, but I have a separate sound recorder that can also do the trick for now. I’ll have to give it a try. I am having a card reader delivered so I can put one on my laptop and one on my desktop to unload videos and edit. I have tried out the GoPro cloud, and I am not terribly thrilled with any of it, apart from the discount they offer to users while shopping. I’d rather keep the filed local, I think. Then I’ll only upload final cuts to the Internet. I have yet to see any real advantage apart from having apparently all the space I need to keep every crap video file I make. That may turn out to be the seeds of a problem. But who knows? Maybe in the next few weeks I’ll get a video created and uploaded to the channel again.

Mondy is anticipated to be the day we have our deli slicer delivered. I have been wanting a proper one for many years now, and we have what appears to be a decent one on the way. It is a Berkel 300 Redline. I am a little worried about it after seeing the shipping details. For whatever reason, it is listed with a shipping weight of 122 pounds. I am having trouble believing that, but I worry that I believe wrong. I guess we’ll see what it is like when it gets here. But honesty, how can a home line slicer weight so much? Maybe they packed it in a wooden crate?

I have very few hand tools left in my wish list now. A shipment arrives also on Monday. It is just a few things, and while there are a couple more planes to be desired, I think I have enough to get a real start in my workshop. Spring will give us access to the barn for cleanup, and to rearrange our storage. I have a permanent wall to fix into the old garage door of my shop. That wall wants a window built into it for some heat and light. Missus has a kiln on order that also wants a home in the shop.

So, a lot is going on this year. I think we will be able to reach closer than ever to self-sufficiency. I have always said that it is a very expensive state to reach. On the upside, I am where I can start building some of the remaining tools I need. I am even considering building my own travishers. I’ll still have to buy the blades, but the handles and bodies will save me around $100 each. That’s not small potatoes. Small potatoes come from my garden.

There you have it! An end of February summary. That’s what’s going on, and where we are at, and where we are going for the moment. I am excited to be at the point in life where I feel like I finally have a life, and all the things that that entails. Having moved country twice and other events that have left me with next to nothing, it is a hard thing to recover from. But I feel quite like I have arrived. Everything else is just improving things up and building equity. For me, that’s a good place to be. Oh, and I am about two weeks short of my 52nd birthday.

Record Cold

Previously our record cold temperature was -9F. It was set on New Year’s in 2019, I think. Since the weather station keeps the all-time record readily available, I cannot look up the second coldest, and third, and so on. That got bumped recently to -11. That record was set a couple of weeks ago. I was kind of proud of it. But even more recently, during a cold snap that hit us this week, we hit a new all-time record of -21F just yesterday. The forecast called for it, then set us up to immediately get into a warming trend that would bring us back up to normal temperatures in just three days or so. I trust lawyers and weathermen just as much as I trust car salespeople. Especially as much as I do sat here now at around 2:00AM the next day, monitoring the temps and our water pipes. An hour ago, we hit -23. It went up since then to the old record of -21 when I got up feeling the briskness in the house. Typically, one can expect the coldest part of the day to happen around sunrise. That gives us about five hours or so to reset this record again.

Out of interest, Peter Sinks hit a low yesterday of -42.56F. Peter Sinks is 20.82 miles from our house at a heading of 70.22 degrees. It holds the record for second coldest place in the lower United States at -69.3F, recorded in 1985. The coldest on record is at Roger’s Pass in Montana which in 1954 recorded a comparatively bone chilling -69.7. Peter Sinks is a geographic feature in the northern Utah mountains near Bear Lake. One can think of it as a sort of dish shape that collects falling cold air in its bottom. Trapped there, the air cannot fall out and dissipate, so as more cold air falls in from the atmosphere, it just gets colder and colder.

2:35AM just passed by, and we hit -24F. That ancient record has been edged out.

When I woke up about half an hour ago, I found the woodstove had a couple of logs in it that were putting up a decent fight against the cold. There was room for some more, so I went out to the stash on the front porch to bring in some more. I had nearly emptied the bunk in the house with the couple I added to the stove. I can only imagine for now that the logs I had found burning away in it were added by a chilly Missus who must have been up recently. The girls and I are sleeping in the living room again tonight, which is the room next to where the stove is. Despite all the stove’s effort, it is chilly in here. Of course, under the massive comforter I have wrapped around me, that chill is not so menacing. I hope the girls have enough blankets to prevent the assault. They both have their heads under, so I would guess they are a little chilly. The older one recently awoke and pulled another over her, then fell back to sleep. I may have to trek upstairs to get them each one or two more.

With the record set yesterday, and our all-time high on my weather station of 104F, that put our temperature spread to 125 degrees. Obviously, that is going to be a bit greater by morning. -25F has already slipped by us in the time I spent typing, and I think it is fair to expect -30 to go by before the sun rises. It is 2:50AM and I think I am going to get up and boil the kettle for Missus’ 3:00AM wake up, get those blankets for the girls and encourage the woodstove to flex its muscles.

I must have put too much wood in the woodstove because it has warmed up outside to -24. Missus is up and quickly on her second cup of tea. She says I used too small a cup for her first. I checked that water was running at a drizzle in both of the bathrooms. I brought some wood in from the stores on the front porch, too. The dining room made it up to 75 when I let the stove run up to the maximum safe operating temperature. Missus’ craft room and office is surprisingly warm for running one of those heat panels and the fan blowing air in from the dining room only to keep it warm. Meanwhile, I continue my temperature record watch party of one. It’s at -23. Maybe I ought to just go back to sleep if we already set the record. Nothing but boring now. What a laugh!

After 4:00Am now, and it has warmed up to -22. Still colder than yesterday. It could go either way from here, but I am going to sleep through it, whatever it does. It is time to go reclaim the joy of being in dreamland. What fun it has been to see this shocking cold! Not from out in it, mind! I am quite happy to remain here in the house!

It is coming up to 10:30AM now. It bottomed out this morning at 6:10AM at -26F. That’s a record on my weather station. Right now, I have the block heater on the tractor so I can try to use the tractor to jump start the truck. That’s how it is today. I hope we will see the temperatures warm up as the forecast predicts it will over the next few days.

Going to Get Colder!

After our previous report about the cold, today was playing out to be a mellow day when a friend of mine texted and asked if we thought we were going to be in the range of the negative temperature storm heading into the US. I had no idea what he was talking about. Then I saw two of the kids were messaging and I looked at the video one posted, and there was my answer. I think you will look back upon this as the Christmas Freeze of 2022. Whatever it gets called, it’s going to get very, very cold. We are anticipating windchills as low as -25F, and we are only going to get brushed by the arctic air as it barrels into the US from Canada in the next 48 hours or so. Wind gusts here are expected to reach 50 mph, but I will be the first to admit that the wind never reaches up to what is anticipated. I suspect based on normal weather predictions compared to reality, we will see wind gusting to 35 mph. That at about 2F is enough to still make it a hellish cold.

I spent three and a half hours today working with our animals that live outside, and prepared them with food, bedding, water, and whatever I could to keep them out of direct wind and show. We are meant to get snow starting tonight, then going on till the day after tomorrow. Again, all we can do is wait and see. But this is going to goof with a lot of people’s travel plans over Christmas, including the kid who posted the video in Messenger who has to travel back home from where he works in another state. He’s excited. He already has the record among people I know for longest commute to work, four days, when we went to work this last week. All of that was due to weather, too.

Well, it is tired time, and I am going to go to sleep. Will probably be clearing snow tomorrow afternoon, or the next morning. It’s going to be interesting!

Cold!

And so, there we have it. The temps are a bit on the chilly side this day! The sun is sinking over the horizon as I write this, and who knows what tonight will bring? The wind map does not give any promises of a warmer overnight.

It looks like we are in the middle of a trough that will be tormenting us another day or so. Perfect time to be inside with a chocolate latte and some YouTube videos.

We are a good quarter of the way through the wood we have stocked up in the bunk, and winter has not yet started. I am not counting a second pile though, and we may still have enough. If not, there is a chap nearby that sells wood by the cord, and based on the pile he keeps outside his house, I am not going to have to worry about him running out… ever. We’ll buy some if we need it,

I was up in the middle of the night last night, and found the house comfortable, though a little cool. It was a pleasant surprise given it was around -7 degrees at that time. We had a smoldering fire in the stove and three panel heaters on in three rooms, running on 400 watts each. 1,200 watts is not too bad for half of whole house heat. We use window coverings to keep the cold at bay where the glass is. That makes a big difference, based on our experience in past years. Given the outside temperature at the time, I was well relieved to have what we did.

Missus was up early this morning and said the power flashed off for a second sometime this morning. That’s a good reminder that it could get a lot colder if those panel heaters shut down.

I know the wood we have has been too wet to burn to get good heat out of it. It was not seasoned properly. But it is what we have, and I just have to be vigilant with keeping the chimney clean. I cleaned it yesterday in fact! Not top to bottom, but at the bend at the bottom. Anyway, I loaded a bit of wood a few minutes ago, and I suspect I may have got some older wood in there, because the heat that is kicking off the stove right now is the kind that warms right to the bone.

Coming up to 6PM now. Time to get a late supper.

Late Summer Projects Update

I have finished most of the fencing for the old llama pens in the side yard next to the house. These pens are conveniently located and make life easy daily, but especially in winter, for feeding and caring for the animals. I have two goats in the pen I am looking at keeping the calves in for their winter feedings, and I have let the calves out into the pen, too. The gates are in where I want them, finally allowing access to those pens for things like the lawn mower, and hopefully one day a tractor large enough to lift out anything that dies in the pens. It happens. Best to make it manageable. The only bit of fencing left to do there is along the east side of one of the pens where there is electric fencing at the moment.

The new driveway is serviceable to some degree now! It is rough and could really use a smoothing out. I have been hoping for years to get a tractor to do this sort of thing, but one never comes. The resources to do so may come soon, finally. If so, I would like to level it out and push a little out to grade and give it a smooth transition out to the road, rather than through the shallow end of the borrow pit, as is there now.

I have all the hay stacked in one place now, rather than sitting in a trailer. I need a lot more hay for over winter. I’ll have to have help loading it all, as there is too much for me to do on my own. I have about 75 bales now and need a total of around 300. So that’s an ongoing project. I also want to get a feeder to help keep the hay off the ground in the pen, though I have seen one farmer who successfully feeds on the ground in a field all winter. It is an opportunity to get one, and I probably should, though. It will serve more than just these cows.

Firewood had had a moment of pause as I have worked on the fencing and focused a little on getting hay. I have a decent pile in the Service Yard that I brought home in spring. It needs to be cut to length and split and stacked before I will really know how far I am from having enough for this winter. I do need a bit more, I am sure. With the summer being quite as hot as it has been, and the heat knocking out a good portion of working hours, I don’t think I am ready yet, at all, though I am close, and I would really love to be ahead or next year.

As I write this, we had one day of reasonable temperatures. There are more autumnal temps coming, too. Now is the time to act! It is time to boot the projects that need to be worked around the weather forward. Those include hay gathering, wood gathering, and things like getting up in the attic and running an electrical wire that needs putting in for the outlet I installed in an awkward corner of my den. The high temps are forecast now for two mid 80’s and the rest to explore the whole of the 70’s for the next ten days. There is also rain in the forecast, which would be a very welcomed relief from the dry summer we have had. Although, when I checked my weather records on our station, it was surprising to find this year was actually not the driest recorded. Quite the opposite! The summer months have recorded quite a lot more rain than in previous years. August pulled in 3.44 inches, while previous years have hovered closer to less than one inch, for example.

There are other projects to tackle in the cooler weather, as well. I can get back to the shop, where I can work on the lathe, and candle making. It needs a little clean up in there. I’d also like a proper workbench for wood working. In addition to all this, there is the apparently annual cleaning of the barn that is required before the snowy season starts. The granary has some things stored in it that should not be there. I want my cast iron out! The woodstove will need a servicing before the burning season begins, as well as the chimney cleaning out. I also have some firewood that wants splitting to use in the woodshop. There will be a period when the autumn is too cold, and the shop will be too, and it will want a little heat to keep it, till the winter sets in properly, and makes it all too cold to do anything in for more than a few minutes. That will be the time when I will have to transition any light work into my den, and I can make candles and do leather working in there. All of that must be arranged for.

So that’s where things are as of September 10th, 2022. Let’s see how much we can get done before the end of the month!

The Season’s Change

Nothing marks the end of summer for the children quite like the start of the school year. The school year starts in the morning though, and we have got to get things going for the home education program. Our oldest is going to be taught via teachers online, and our youngest will have a school provided curriculum with e as her lead. Despite these, we have no idea what to do tomorrow, or who to log in with or whatever. If the year starts a little slow, so be it; it has happened before. We’ll get it figured out.

Summer does not end till the third week of September. Even as an adult I still have a time getting my head around the difference between when the school year starts and closes a hard curtain on summer, and when the actual season changes according to the Earth’s orbit around the sun and its reflection on the calendar.

The firewood collection is coming along well enough. I have almost half of it split and stacked, though there we need more to fill the bunk, and more to stack away for use in the fireplace and in the shop. I do intend to go get more wood still, and there is time to do it. We need to get the last of it gathered and split by Thanksgiving at the latest. We are limited to Friday’s now, though, because of school.

The new log splitter seems to be working out pretty good so far. It does not allow the carburetor to fill with water the way the Champion did. That makes it easy to start after wet weather. Not that we have had much wet weather!

The drought is still on here in Southeast Idaho. With the change in the climate, it is probably time to stop calling it a drought and accept it as the new way of things here, unless of course we are still in the course of change. Probably so. I think we will need to change how we do our thing here. Let’s see what comes this winter with the winds of change.

The weather station is working pretty good so far. I bought that new computer about a month ago, and it seems to be doing what it needs to in order to track the weather station and keep the database, and publish the weather online. I added a second monitor to it as it is powerful enough to run a lot more than just a weather station.

That’s what’s new here on the Peasant’s Manor Farm.

So Nearly Spring!

It is almost Spring! Along with the recent time change, the weather is acting accordingly. There are geese in migration and there are other birds showing up, though I have yet to see my first Robin of Spring. The temperatures are warming up with higher daytime highs and nights that are not nearly as cold as they once were. The days after the time change come to sunset later than before, giving us more time to do our evening chores and walk the dogs without having to carry a light. Mud season seemed worryingly early this year, and I wonder if the ground will dry up before the sun warms the ground enough to start the pasture grass and trees. But we will have to wait and see on that still, as the dead grass from last year is now fully exposed, and nothing has even hinted at the blossom.

I have a couple of things on order from eBay and from a reputable antiques replicator that specialized in 18th century products. The first is a corn sheller from the late 19th or early 20th century. I want to grow and dry our own corn to give to the chickens. The one I have on order is in excellent condition. I hope to see it put to good use. From the replicator I have a cast iron cauldron, for fun, and a colonial candle mold, to make candles for my replica tin punched lantern that I received for my birthday. I am really excited about it! I remember first seeing one pictured in a history book in high school and swearing then that one day I would have one. Well, my birthday was finally that day! It looks as new as a Colonial American would have seen it the day he bought one in the 18th century. When the mold arrives tomorrow, I may just melt the wax in the cauldron and make me some candles. I will have everything I need to do it! By tomorrow evening I will be lighting the lantern for the first time.

There is a lot to rearrange here on the farm to carry on with plans we have talked about lately. Missus wants a shop to sell things from. I want a workshop to make things in. Both require a lot of work, and to accomplish them, I think we will need to arrange the layout of some of the internal fencing differently. We will also have to put some animals over the road permanently. In other words, I have a busy spring ahead of me. On top of it, there is the usual with firewood gathering. I need to get a lot of it before it warms up too warm to do such hard work. The splitting can be done any cool morning on the farm. But gathering is away, and just for that reason is inherently more dangerous. But while I am splitting, I can easily take a break, get a drink, and so on. Much safer as it is at home. It also does not require a long drive, so can be started and worked on any day of the week, rather than the days there is no school for the girls, and so on. We expect to be working wood in a new part of the yard, too, and I have to set up a good workspace. Time to review my workflow.

I have the shop reduced to just things that are supposed to be in there. There is a lot to clean up and find homes for, though. I don’t have the space I need for it all and will need to set up some sort of cabinets or workbench still. I would also like to get a jointer’s bench, if I can. I’d like to be able to work in the shop on nay day there is no power, just as well as on the days there is. There are a lot of ideas floating around in my head that will keep me busy redoing it for the whole summer, I’m sure!

With the nights only getting to the mid 20’s, and the days hitting the mid-forties, the house is lovely and comfortable, and easy to keep warm when it needs it. I am thrilled that there is still wood in the woodpile! It is not all well-seasoned, but in a pinch, it will do!

I am still adjusting to the time change. This may be why I am up so late right now. It is approaching eleven o’clock. It is best I get to bed. Tomorrow will no doubt be a bust day! The repairman for the dryer will finally come to replace a part in it. That has been two months in the ordering. I’ll be glad to get it in and be done with it.

The Weather and Heating

According to an article I just saw, January was in a drought, officially, in our part of Idaho. I can confirm that anecdotally. I have not seen much new snow at all. None, really. If you were to look in our yard, you would find snow that has been there since December. Forecasts for the rest of February are not promising.

As for temperatures, it has been warming for the last week, giving the feeling of an early mud season. The grass has been wet, and some of the snow has melted away. There is still a lot covering the ground, but the clear patches are getting larger.

Our upstairs furnace started producing carbon monoxide on the 29th of January. We had a visit from the fire brigade, and then after the weekend, we had a visit from the repairman. The repairman took one look at it and said he could not fix it because it is in a bedroom, and as a combustion furnace, it is out of code. We had some things to discuss in this house, let me tell ya! The furnace upstairs is there because there is no route for ducting from the downstairs to the up. The downstairs furnace has not operated since 2015.

We decided to order some 400-watt panel heaters that hang on the wall and produce constant heat. The effect is similar to a radiator. I ordered three, but so far have only installed two. Between them and the woodstove in the dining room, the house is easy to maintain at about 70F throughout. That’s with the temperatures outside in the tens and twenties. I am actually concerned that when the temps get up into the thirties and forties, it will get too hot inside, and will be hard to keep at an even temp throughout the day.

I have yet to be updated on our electrical usage, but the two panels are using about as much electricity as two or three always on computers. Either way, we are no longer using propane, so there is a cost saved there where the money to cover the extra electric cost can come from.

As for our firewood, I think we will be running out early this year. I need to get more each year ready for winter. I have some green wood that we can burn into to keep warm after we run out of seasoned. There is still about a cord of seasoned left, mind. But once it is gone, I will need to watch the chimney more closely. Green wood burning clogs the spart arrestor. It also clogs the pipe if not kept clear, so I may have to have it apart for that. We are fortunate to have a bend in the bottom of the masonry, which is also out of code, but it collects what drops much faster than the rest of the pipe clogs, and it keeps me after that pipe, and aware of the condition of the entire thing. Once I have to clean that bend out, it is not much of a stretch to just clean the whole pipe. The whole job only takes about an hour. Small price for heating that has proven safer, easier to service, and much more reliable than our furnaces. Less costly to feed, too!

So that’s where we are at with our heating situation. It is a little unconventional, but it seems to be working. It is also redundant, still. I think in a perfect world, I would run a couple of dedicated circuits to carry only the heaters, and put a dimmer switch over each one, allowing them to be individually controlled, and turned down, especially for spring and fall.

Half-way through February, it is getting time to start making some solid plans for spring. Missus has said she would like to try a garden again this year. I would REALLY like to put water in near to the garden spots, so it is not all hose dragging and maintaining. It really kind of ruins it having to carry upwards of 300 feet of hose around the yard to be able to reach everywhere. It’s a pain where watering animals is concerned, too.

The Many Things of Today

I got up this morning knowing I needed to get animal feed and a couple of Kilner jars because I keep buying them and filling them up before I get mayonnaise made and put into what I have bought. After my little one finished school for the day I get her shuffled out the door to go get what we needed, which I figured could fit easily into the car. That’s when things went wrong.

We got out the gate and down the road about 750 feet when the car claimed it was in a faulted mode and overheating. It was only 27 degrees out, and the car had been running for about five minutes, so there is no way it was overheating. But, modern cars being what they are, ours went into self-defense mode, which prevents it throttling. I hate it, because it can do this on the freeway and almost instantly cut power to the motor and leave a family stranded in traffic with no recourse to getting it out of the lane if one did not make it out in time. It seems extremely dangerous to me, which I think I expect from a Ford. Say Pinto with me. Once it dies, the driver may be able to shut off the engine then restart it a couple of times as it continues to act up, then get it moved a short distance. I barely made it back home. We took the truck out.

We went to the feed store and got much of what we needed there, but I knew I needed some Kilner jars, so I decided to pick up dog food and cat food at IFA in Logan. They did not have the jars I needed, nor the cat food, so I went to Smithfield Implement to get the jars. Then we went to IFA in Preston to get the cat food, which they said they had, then called back to have it brought up front and the guy in the back room said they were out, despite the computer claiming there were four. Then he came back as said there where two, and I said I’d take them both!

When home, we rested off the trip, then I put the animal feed away and fed my animals for my chores. Then I checked the car. Still playing like it was overheating. So I checked the coolant reservoir, and it was below the minimum line. I added water and restarted the car. Still in fault mode. So, I remembered that I needed to find the OBDII port scanner… That took a while. By the time I did, I put the thing where I could find it tomorrow. IT was too late to mess with is anymore, and I went and played a game.

Goodnight!

Oh, also. I did look into the weather station data to see if I had recorded the shockwave from the volcanic eruption at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapai.

Volcanic Eruption Shockwave
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapia volcano erupted violently on the 15th of January and sent a shockwave around the world that was recorded in barometers. The gray line shows it here in SE Idaho.

And there it is!

December 5th, 2021

Today we wrapped presents for Christmas and cleaned up that mess. Missus was up from 5Am and took a nap after we finished. That is when things took a slightly strange turn. I went out to change the gate from the old fence panel that was on the front of the pasture across the street to a green gate that was on the front fence of the house, but I had replaced with a grey wire filled gate. It was while I was doing this that I noticed a car parked down the road. The car stayed a bit, then drove further down, then turned around and came back up to the other side and parked again. I carried on working, and it came up and turned around close to me, then went down a little and parked again. It then drove down again, and parked. I watched from the house when I finished the gate, and someone got out and seemed to dump something along the side of the road. Then they parked on the other side again and more dumping on that side of the road. The kind of thing carried on for probably 45 minutes in all that I was able to see. During this time, I also saw the man in the car get out and ring the bell on the neighbor’s house, and the woman got out and went into his yard and waved and clapped her hand at our animals behind the neighbor’s house. It was all very strange. They finally left about 11:30AM.

I can tell you they were city people. The guy got out and shook the wire on the electric fence. He’s lucky it is not working at the moment. I think I will get it going again, in case they visit again. Maybe tomorrow.

After I got the gate changed, I took a rope over and chased down the female llamas. I stayed at the middle of the field while turning my attention to the girl who was leading the run. I kept after her till she wore down and finally made a mistake and went into the pen at the gate crossing the canal. That’s when I finally shut her in and put the rope on her. I made it into a harness and led her and the other llama both across the street, the second one just following the first with no lead on her at all.

I moved the trailers to the back of the house along the fence line. They both fit into the space where the big pig used to have her small pen. That gets them both out of the way bit also in a space where they should be easy to put away, and easy to get out to use. I might be converting that old horse trailer into a mobile chicken coop for the field across the street though.

Those jobs kept me busy till around 4PM.

After all that, I put the male llamas and horse onto the whole field. They will have plenty of feed available till the snow covers it all enough they cannot hoof it. I will be feeding them sooner than that though.

I did all my chores and went in for the evening, happy to put my feet up and sit with the dog in my chair.

So that’s the llamas across the street for the season and on bought hay.

Also of note, it was as high as 52F today, lovely and sunny and warm. This week there are four days with snow possible. But today and the recent days remain mild and nice.