Spring Posting Continues

Hard to resist these photos:

A.P.D.: Indoor Temperature

For most of the ten years we lived at Blackrock, we had no air conditioning in the house at all. Our bedroom was upstairs, with windows facing the setting sun. Upstate New York--especially when living by a lake--is incredibly humid, and surprisingly hot in the summer. This meant some very uncomfortable temperatures in our bedroom at night.

Anytime I saw a nighttime low that was 70 degrees or above, I knew I would be getting no sleep. It would be well into the 80s in our bedroom, and so sticky that my skin would feel simultaneously hot and chilled from the clammy sweat.

It was very unpleasant.

Here, where the air is significantly drier, I start to notice a change in my comfort level at 80 degrees. Our furnace thermostat is in the kitchen, so I know what the temperature is in there. Our bedroom is right off the kitchen, and is usually about the same temperature.

Last night when I went to bed, it was 83 degrees. That's a little too hot. I didn't feel comfortable enough to sleep until about 10 p.m.

When I woke up at 5:30 a.m., it was 73 degrees. That's a little warm, but I could still drink hot coffee without sweating too much.

The sunflowers and sage have been enjoying the heat a lot more than I do.

In the winter, I set our furnace thermostat overnight to 57 degrees. I mostly do this because otherwise it will cycle on and off and wake me up in the early morning, but that is actually a comfortable temperature for me to sleep in.

During the day it's set to 65 degrees, but with our woodstove going, it's usually between 68 and 70 degrees.

So I guess my ideal indoor temperatures are less than 60 at night and about 70 during the day. 

I have a small window of comfort, apparently.

So tell me: What is your ideal indoor temperature?

Sweet Relief

For a lot of reasons, we don't have air conditioning in our house. We do have a giant old window unit that can theoretically be put in the kitchen, but I hate the thing so much (and A. hates it even more) that it very rarely actually gets put in.

We don't typically have temperatures over 100 degrees, and more importantly, the humidity here is usually pretty low, so it's manageable. 

But there are days. Days when a hot wind has been blowing constantly, and there are thunderstorms brewing all around that raise the humidity level. Days when I have to bake bread or otherwise heat up the kitchen. 

Days when the outdoor temperature readout on my shiny new Honda's dashboard informs me it's 100 degrees*. 

Those days are not comfortable.

We have ceiling fans, and my bedroom is on the east side of the house, so I can usually get by with reading in my bed with the fan going during the hottest part of the day.

But if a storm rolls in? Then the wind will pick up, the temperature will drop twenty degrees in thirty minutes, and all windows and doors in the house will be opened to let an honest-to-goodness cool breeze blow all through the house.

Bedroom curtains billowing in a cool breeze from a storm.

Air conditioning is nice, and certainly convenient, but there is nothing like the feel of a cool rain-laden breeze after you've been sweating all day. 

Nature's A/C is perfect.

*Although to be honest, this was when I had driven somewhere off our high plateau, so it was only about 94 degrees at my actual house at this moment.

Seasonal Flowering

Look what's on my table right now!

Spring!

Those daffodils and apricot blossoms replaced the arrangement of dried weeds I'd had on the table since Thanksgiving.

A study in contrasts.

Although I do appreciate the subtle beauty in things like that dried arrangement, by the time spring rolls around, I am definitely ready for something more colorful and not brown. 

I purposely don't buy flowers at the store. I have the same feeling about store flowers that proponents of seasonal eating have about produce: It's better to wait for them to be local and in-season. 

This means that it is a long wait for there to be flowers around my house in the spring, but that just makes it all the sweeter when they finally appear. That vase on my table brought joy into my home in the form of flowers.

So tell me: Has spring sprung where you are yet? What are your signs of spring?

Still No Water

Unfortunately, it appears the pipes under the house are frozen. The main part of our house is a trailer, so there's a lot of "under the house," and of course, under the house never gets sun. I've noted since we moved here that anything not in a direct sun takes forever to thaw or melt, so that's not great. 

That means that this is day four with no running water. While this is annoying, there's always the positives to consider. So let's make a list, shall we?

1) We can still get water in buckets from the village well house. A. and the biggest boy have been hauling that water with the truck every day, some for the animals, some for us. This means we can still use the toilets, brush teeth, take a sponge bath as needed, etc.

2) I know how to brush my teeth, take a sponge bath, do dishes, etc., with very little water. We used to run out of water with some regularity at Blackrock, so I know it can be done.

Dishes waiting on the water to boil.

3) Now my children know how to brush their teeth, etc., without running water. I don't know exactly how this will be applicable to their future lives, but I'm sure it's benefitting them in some way. This is what the childhood development experts like to call "grit," right? Sure.

4) This happened during the school week, so the children can avail themselves of school toilets, drinking fountains, and lunch. 

5) We still have electricity and heat. Lack of water frequently comes with a storm that takes out the electricity, too, and that's a really big bummer. 

Anyway, A. put a space heater under the house to help things along, and it's going to be over 50 degrees today, so fingers crossed for water soon.

Blasted

The whole country is in the midst of what the media likes to dramatically call an arctic blast. We are no exception. Our forecasted low for tonight is one degree below zero.

It was eight degrees Sunday morning, with a heavy layer of rime on all surfaces.

This happens every winter here, but this year, it got us. I got home from work yesterday to find all our water pipes frozen.

Boooooo.

It's kind of funny that it happened during the day instead of overnight, but that's when the wind picked up. It was 10 degrees with about 20-mile-an-hour winds by the time I got home, and A. doesn't really run water much when he's home alone.

But more importantly, the bag of wool we use as an insulator where the village water connects to our house had been removed at some point during warmer weather and never was put back.

Thus, frozen pipes.

This is the first time this has happened to us here, and while it is a bummer, it's not as dire as it could be. The village well house has a tap in it, so A. went up there and filled five-gallon buckets of water for the animals and us.

He asked me last night before he did this where he might find lids for the buckets, so the water wouldn't slosh out of the buckets and into the bed of the truck while he was bringing them home. I knew I had seen a couple of lids in the pasture, so I went out in the frigid night with a spotlight to find them.

I found them, but they were frozen to the ground. 

So fun.

I did manage to pry them up with a hammer, though. With the other three lids we found, A. got 25 gallons of water. Ten of those were for the animals, so he brought three buckets into the house for flushing toilets, etc.

Part of the "etc." is washing dishes. Much as I dislike waking up to a messy kitchen, I just didn't have it in me to do it last night. But this morning, I have the water sieved and starting to heat on the woodstove--to be brought later to the actual boil on the propane stove--so I can have one pan of soapy water in the sink for washing and one pan of boiling water for rinsing. 

Also on and by the stove: Cube steaks thawing for dinner and two gallons of drinking water from the Honda thawing out.

Doing dishes this way isn't ideal, but it's not going to get above freezing until tomorrow afternoon, so the odds of having running water until then aren't great. And we need the utensils if nothing else. I do have paper plates, but I do not have plastic utensils. 

The very cold weather has also frozen the outside drain line from the furnace, which I discovered this weekend when I woke up to a 50-degree house. This has happened before, so we knew to disconnect the hose inside the furnace closet and let it drip into something on the floor. 

The white casserole dish was the biggest thing I could find that would still fit under the hose. I use the measuring cup and plastic jar to empty it out when it's really full so I won't slop it all over.

The furnace really only runs at night, because the woodstove heats the house during the day. That dish can't hold all the water that drips from the furnace at night, though, so I have to get up once in the night to empty it, lest it over flow all over the floor.

Also, a little PSA for you: I had no idea that the condensate liquid from furnaces and boilers is toxic, but it is. I was going to give some to the dogs before A. stopped me to tell me it's really dangerous. I thought it was just water condensed from the hot furnace and cold air, but it's not. I'm sure glad A. knew this.

None of this is particularly fun, but it's temporary. After tonight's very low low temperature, it's supposed to get to the mid-forties tomorrow afternoon. And the next day is going to be 50 degrees. So we will thaw out. And it would be much worse if we couldn't get water anywhere, even in buckets.

So tell me: How are you weathering the blast?

Still

Just posting on a random Thursday to show you what's outside my front gate right now.

Snow and ice.

And to remind you of an excellent Christmas song that seems particularly appropriate this morning.

Happy* almost-Christmas Thursday!

* And happy birthday to my mother. She likes Christmas music, too. 

Christmas Prep in the Arctic

Those of you with small children: Where do you store Christmas presents before they're put under the tree? I seem to recall them being in closets when I was a child. I suspect that with the prevalence of giant walk-in closets now, it has gotten even easier to hide them. And of course, with most of those giant closets being in master bedrooms, it's so simple to close the bedroom door and pull the presents out to wrap in the bedroom. Maybe with some Christmas carols playing.

How idyllic. 

But that's not how it happens at my house.

You know where I store presents? In our unheated and barely enclosed shop, that's where. I don't have anywhere inside my house where they wouldn't be ferreted out by my inquisitive children. So I keep them in the big boxes they're shipped in and stack them in a corner of the shop.

This year's tree awaiting wrapped gifts.

There's plenty of room in the shop, and the kids never look in there, but it makes it somewhat challenging to get them into the house undetected for wrapping. But I really wanted to do some of the wrapping last night, so I wouldn't be faced with a pile of things all to be done before I could sleep tonight. 

However, I put all the presents under the tree after the kids go to bed on Christmas Eve. I didn't want to bring them inside, only to have to bring them back out again, and then back in again tonight. So I thought it would be best to just bring them into A.'s office to wrap them, because that has an outside door that opens into the shop.

There were several downsides to this plan. One is that there is very little room in the office, especially with the two big dog crates in there at the moment. 

Another is that A.'s office also has a door leading into Calvin and Jack's room, and they weren't all the way asleep yet. So I had to be very, very quiet. Luckily, my going in and out was somewhat explained by letting the dogs in and out before settling them in their crates*.

But the biggest downside was the weather. It was nine degrees outside, and thus nine degrees in the shop. Maybe 40 degrees in the office. And I was going back and forth between them. So cold. So, so cold. 

Luckily, most of my "wrapping" involves sticking things in re-usable gift bags and re-labeling them. I decided anything that required finger dexterity, like wrapping paper and tape, could wait until tonight when I could bring everything into my bedroom.

I was only out there for maybe 25 minutes, but that was plenty long enough. My hands were stiff and numb, and my feet were blocks of ice, but I got most of the presents ready to go. 

Merry Christmas Eve to everyone, and I hope your final preparations happen in climate control. 

* What actually happened there is that I let the dogs out to go to the bathroom before they were in for the night, and they went out the door, stopped, and then huddled in some camping equipment next to the office door before I let them back in. They didn't even get three feet from the office door. That's how unpleasant it was.

Weathering the Blast

I have found it very amusing that in the past couple of decades, the weather has gotten very histrionic. Or rather, the weather hasn't changed so much as the weather reporting. This most recent "arctic blast" is a case in point. I mean, I know it's colder than usual, but the name is sort of ridiculous.

Anyway.

It's cold. And I know it's cold all over the place. Here, it was 3 degrees when I got up this morning, with a wind warning. Which meant our temperatures were forecast to feel like twenty below zero today. And that meant that the last day of school was canceled before our Christmas break began.

YAY!!! 

Of course, that resulted in an absolutely insanely busy day at work/school yesterday. But after we got through finals for Cubby; A. driving the school bus for the whole school to go caroling in the village; hastily arranged last-minute parties for the classes; helping the school cook close down the kitchen for two weeks; AND decorating the church Christmas tree after work . . .

Then I could come home and get ready for the cold weather. 

That included hanging a blanket over the drafty east-facing window in the living room that the wind was hitting full force. 

Moving the dog crates (and the dogs) into A.'s office temporarily. There are only a few nights a year they need to be in, and these two are some of them.

And today, my cold weather activities included baking molasses cookies for about two hours. I made a double batch of this recipe I posted last year, which means I actually made a batch similar in size to one that Grandma Bishop would have typically made.

Poppy insisted that some of them should be heart-shaped, "because Christmas is all about love."

Grandma Bishop's granddaughter--that would be the MiL--gave me a cookie jar for Christmas this year*. I asked for it, so I knew what had come from her. And I decided she wouldn't mind if I opened my gift early so I could fill it with her grandmother's cookies.

And that is just what I did.

In the recipe I posted, I noted that the original giant recipe was the sort of thing farmwives made to fill their cookie jars. That turned out to be accurate, as the whole recipe filled that jar, with a few left over for the kids to eat while they watched The Princess Bride.

Obviously, they're living their best arctic blast life.

So tell me: Are you being blasted? And if so, how are you weathering it?

* Thanks, MiL! I love it. And so do your grandchildren.

Snowy Stuff

Snow.

 

Snow dog.

Snow girl.

Snow cyclops (and its creator).

Snow clothesline.

Yup, that sure was a lot of snow. Almost two feet, actually. It's already starting to melt, though, which means that soon it will be a lot of slop. But hooray for moisture!

A Significant Weather Event

 

We need to talk about the weather. It is insane. Like, "had too many drinks and has a lampshade on its head" out of control.

I can't even count how many times in the past two months we've had temperature shifts so dramatic we practically got whiplash. Such as the temperature dropping forty degrees in 24 hours. Or the temperature rising forty degrees in 12 hours.

One thing we have not had, however, is any kind of precipitation. Dry as a bone here on the high plains for months now. This is nice in a way, because we haven't had to worry about hail or tornados this year. Not nice, of course, because drought of any kind is Very Bad for an agricultural community.

So when we saw snow in our forecast, we were initially very happy. Moisture! Hooray!

Then the forecast developed a little further, and we saw that the snow was going to be accompanied by 20-mile-an-hour winds. And that the temperatures at night were going to be in the low teens. And it wouldn't get above freezing during the day. AND that this was going to continue for three days.

Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

Yesterday was the first day of the stormy weather. We woke up to 15 degrees and snow blowing around, but no significant accumulations and school wasn't cancelled, so off to school (or work, in my case) we went.

To find that the elementary building's furnace wasn't working.

Yes. A non-working furnace on what might be the coldest day of the year.

Luckily, the kids at this school all live on ranches and definitely do not spend their days in climate control, so they're pretty hardy. Unluckily, it was 46 degrees in the school while I was sitting there going over long division with the fifth graders. 

I repeat, 46 degrees.

I was extremely grateful I wore my warmest wool coat (this one!), because I didn't take it off all day. 

Meanwhile, one of Cubby's classmates was sitting there calmly doing his math work in short sleeves. It was 46 degrees!

Incidentally, did you know that dry-erase white boards don't erase fully when it's that cold? I didn't either, but now I do.

Anyway. 

Random break for an old photo of Poppy in her snow gear.

Ready for a school in which the furnace isn't working.

There was working heat in some other classrooms around the campus, so I spent some time shuffling kids around, letting them all have a chance to thaw out away from their refrigerated classrooms while the poor maintenance guy had what is undoubtedly his worst day of work in awhile. 

There is no calling a service person when you're a hundred miles from anywhere. He was on his own.

He did eventually get everything working in the early afternoon, although the building never really had a chance to warm up before school was dismissed an hour early due to the worsening snow. And the fact that several of the kids had a couple of hours of driving before they would be home.

Thankfully, we don't have school today, so we can all huddle in by the woodstove as the children get on and off the various Zoom classes they are now expected to attend, thanks to the laptops provided to them by the school. Whee.

So, how's the weather where you are? Anything dramatic?

A Clothesline for the Times

 

It's Sunday! And that means my clothesline looks like this:

And on the seventh day, she washed face masks.

Also today, the backyard garden looks like this:

So green! So verdant! So doomed.

It's going to be 95 degrees today. It's going to be 95 degrees tomorrow. But Tuesday? Tuesday, our high--our high!-- is forecast to be 54 degrees.

A 40-degree drop in one day is extreme even for this place of extreme weather. But even more extreme than that? We're forecast to have a freeze Tuesday night. 

No, 29 degrees on September 8 is not normal, nor is it appreciated. I spent all summer watering those tomatoes in the above photo to keep them alive so I could get a good harvest, anticipating that the majority of the tomatoes would be harvested in September. There are a LOT of green tomatoes on the plants. But they will not survive 29 degrees.

I'll cover the ones that have the most tomatoes on them as best I can, but I don't have enough material to cover all of them. Anyway, our forecast also calls for 30-mile-an-hour winds, which is going to make it hard to keep them covered.

Oh well. Mama N. giveth, and she taketh away. Such is the nature of gardening.

Still kind of sucks, though.

Springing

The peas are planted! A single Very Fancy Tulip survived the voracious gophers last year and is coming up near the driveway! I'm eating (a small amount of) arugula!

And the apricot tree by the door is in full and very impressive bloom.

Hello, Spring. We're so happy to see you again.

Alleluia, the Lettuce and the Lamb Live!

Yes! Even though it got below zero the other morning--it dropped another degree after I wrote this post--the layer of snow on top of the windows covering the lettuce was apparently enough insulation and the lettuce survived.

I was so happy.

Tonight we're supposed to get anywhere from 3-8 inches of snow, which is good because then tomorrow night it will be single digits again. So the baby lettuces should be okay with their snow blankie on them.

The other baby that will need protection from this storm is the lamb that was born yesterday morning.

Yup, time to update the Current Lamb Count! But first, the story.

Yesterday morning before church, A. went out to feed the animals and discovered a just-born ewe lamb in the neighbor's pasture where the sheep have been grazing (with permission, yes). She looked healthy, but she wasn't getting up to nurse and there's no shelter in that pasture. It was right around freezing, but the wind was picking up and the lamb was just too cold to get a good start.

A. didn't want to take her from her mother, because that makes it harder for the bonding between the baby and mom to get established. He didn't think he could move the mother all the way back to the shed by our house without her getting upset about being too far from her flock.

So he stuck the lamb inside his own wool coat. She quickly responded to the warmth and tried to kick him. He put her down, she stood up, and the mom came over to lick her. A good sign, but the lamb soon went down again. A lamb on the ground can't nurse. If it can't nurse soon after being born, it will die.

Right about this time, I had to leave with the children for church--Cubby is the only altar server at our church, so it's kind of important for him to be there--leaving the shepherd with his lonely vigil.

When we got back around 9 a.m., we heard the rest of the story. A. had continued to put the lamb in his coat to warm it, but she kept having trouble once she was exposed again. He eventually had the idea to make a hot water bottle out of a mason jar and wrap the lamb in his coat with that. Then he left the lamb in the pasture with her mom and came inside himself.

As he explained it to me, it's important to do what you can and then step away and stop messing with the lamb. Intervention causes stress for both the lamb and the mom.

When he went back out twenty minutes later, the lamb had gotten out of the coat on her own and was following her mom around. By the time we got back from church, she was nursing and looked just fine.

A. will move the sheep into the pasture with Samson for the duration of the coming snow event so he can put the lamb into the old pig pen there for shelter, and all will be well.

So. Current lamb count: 2--two girls, no boys, and who knows how many sheep left to deliver.

I Fear for the Infant Lettuce

It is zero degrees at my house right now.

Zero. Degrees.

I may have to start over with the lettuce.

P.S. This should have been a tweet, right? Except I have never had a Twitter account, and so you get my short 'n' useless updates right here on my Very Serious Blog. Lucky you.

Whiplash Weather

Yesterday it was 62 degrees with some sun. Okay, so it was windy, too, but it's almost always windy here and still! Sixty-two degrees! At the beginning of February!

Our high temperature today, however . . . well, that's supposed to be 22 degrees. The wind is still blowing madly, AND there's snow out there.

And our low tonight? Six. That's it. Just six. No digit in front of or behind that six.

My poor baby lettuces will need to be covered with a blankie (not a joke--I literally cover the frames with old bedding), and we'll all just have to ride it out until sixty degrees returns again.

How's the weather where you are?

Waiting on the World To Change

It is currently 31 degrees, dry, and windy. But when I get up tomorrow it will be snowing. And it will continue snowing most of tomorrow and tomorrow night.

I was not dreaming of a white Thanksgiving, if only because it makes animal care so much more difficult. They still need food and water, even if their hay is covered in six inches of snow and the outside tap is frozen. And even if the power goes out, which is a distinct possibility.

So I took some measures to ensure that no matter what happens tomorrow, I can feed and water our growing menagerie without too much aggravation.

First I placed a large tub in A.'s office--which has a door leading directly into the shop--and filled it with water. That way I'll have plenty of water to put in buckets for the horse, chickens, and dogs, with or without a functioning tap or water pump.

No one needs to go in and out of that door anyway, right?

I used some rocks to secure a tarp over part of Samson's hay in the pasture, because it's not under cover and if it snows as much as they think it will, he might have a hard time getting to it. I might have to dig the tarp out a bit, but at least once it's moveable, I can just flip it off to uncover the dry hay underneath.

For the chickens, I cooked a couple of the greenish pumpkins from the volunteer plants. They'll probably stay in their coop for a couple of days, and having food for them to peck at keeps them from pecking at each other.

And finally, for the humans, Poppy and I made chocolate chip cookies.

I suppose we could eat some pumpkin, too, but cookies sounded much more appealing.

Okay, Mama N. I'm ready as I'll ever be. Bring on the Thanksgiving snow. (But not too much, okay? Thanks.)

Many Photos, Few Words

I seem to have been taking a lot of photos lately and then doing nothing with them. And so . . .

It snowed all day on Saturday.

The tulips were brave.

As were our neighbors across the street: the horses and bull.

The boys were thrilled with the enormous snow balls they could roll. This is Cubby.

And this is Jack.

Poppy was slightly less thrilled.

Then yesterday, it was sunny and 70 degrees and all the snow was gone. The boys chopped down two and a half trees.

Because A. told them they could, not because they just went to town with the hatchet. Though I wouldn't put that past them.

Meanwhile, Poppy gave some of the farm animals a bath in a bucket.

Safely out of range of any falling trees.

And that's pretty much it. I think you're all caught up now. Over and out.

The Traditional March Snow

For the two years we lived on the Canadian border, we experienced severe winter storms on March 14th. Both years.

Honestly, that sort of thing was one of the reasons we moved.

I was not expecting March 14th to feature heavy snow here in New Mexico. I don't think it will. March 4th, however?

This is pretty severe winter weather for our current location.

It all started with ice on Saturday night, which ensured that the subsequent snow would stick to everything. It dropped into the single digits last night and hasn't been above freezing for 48 hours now.

The big difference here is that it was almost 70 degrees the day before all this started, and it's going to be 70 degrees again on Thursday.

I can take a winter storm in March when I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be seeing winter weather for the next two months.

Health, Wealth, Happiness, and Enchantment

Yes, I have brought my New Year's Day tradition with me to New Mexico. This year's health-bringing pork is a pork butt that is currently in a 300-degree oven to cook slowly all day.

In a spectacular example of very forward thinking, I actually bought my bag of black-eyed peas while I was in Tucson for Thanksgiving. I hadn't yet seen any in the stores around here, so when I had to go to the grocery store in Tucson, I went ahead and got some to bring back with me. How's that for planning ahead? Can't jeopardize this year's happiness by striking out on the black-eyed peas, now can I?

I forgot to look for a ham hock to put in with the peas, but A. did get a GIANT BOX of bacon at the grocery store last time we went. Seriously. Giant. Ten pounds of bacon for twenty bucks.  It's supposedly the ends and pieces, but it mostly looks like regular bacon to me. Good deal.

Anyway. I'm obviously not lacking smoked pork, albeit in thin strips. So I rolled a few pieces up and secured them into a ball with a toothpick for easy fishing out (and crisping up) when the black-eyed peas are done.

Nothing like a good bacon roll-up, I always say.

I put the black-eyed peas in the oven with the pork instead of on the stove. No sense running an extra burner.

I have no dearth of greens this year, once again thanks to A. The collard greens he planted for me produced a LOT of greens.

The collard greens in a warmer, less snowy time.

Harvesting those greens was the very last thing I did at our rental house in the village. I was exhausted from moving and a two-hour mad cleaning rush, but by God, I would get my collard greens. I cut two huge bags full.*

Good thing, as it is currently 13 degrees outside and looks like this:

Even collard greens aren't happy in this weather.

I have about three gallon bags of blanched collard greens in the freezer, which will be duly cooked later (with more bacon!) to ensure wealth in 2019.

We're also going to use some of that freshly-fallen snow to make maple snow ice cream. I've never made it before, but it can't be that hard, and we might as well make good use of the snow, right?

Right. Happy New Year, my lovelies.

* I pulled the plants in the front bed in the picture there, but A. asked me to leave in the ones in the back bed so we could drive by later and see if they started re-growing. We didn't know if anyone would be moving in after we were gone, but it turned out that the school cook and her family moved in. So I told her there were collard greens in the back bed, and she exclaimed, "Oh, great! I love collard greens!" I feel that house--and those plants--ended up with the right people.