Chicken Fried Happiness

We have babies!

2012-05-24T08:06:00.000-06:00

Beneath this warm mass of fur is a pile of 5 small, spotted, hairless bunnies. They are all entwined together, snuggled under fur that the female has pulled from her body to keep them warm and safe. They will stay snuggled under there for 10 days or so until their eyes begin to open and their little bodies begin to hair out. The mother rabbit will jump into the nesting box once or twice a day to allow the kits to nurse. Her milk is concentrated with the perfect combination of nutrients on which her litter will thrive with only a couple of nursings a day.

Only one out of the three females gave birth. The other two did not produce a litter. A loud noise or a large fright can sometimes interrupt a pregnancy and the females will not deliver. I'm not sure why but sometimes this happens. All the does are three so it's not related to age. We'll give them a week or two to rest, then re-breed. In the mean time, these five guys will grow and mature seemingly over night. Before you know it, they will be jumping around the cage pestering their patient mother and each other like siblings are apt to do.

New coop door

2012-05-20T21:48:00.000-06:00

I have a new door to the chicken coop!

My beloved husband came home from the Great White North and built a proper coop door. It's wonderful in that it's very sturdy and the green panel comes off exposing a whole door of just chicken wire. This will be good for summer when it's really hot and the animals must stay inside. The rabbits suffer in any temps above 80 degrees. So this will be nice for them. Of course any mammal that would eat a rabbit could just blow through the screen door but hopefully, with the red puppy leaving her mark all around the property, we won't have to deal with predators breaking and entering.

We painted it like the farmers used to do with a big white "X" on the outside so you can see if the door is closed across the pasture. Of course the coop is just across the yard from the house so it's not a stretch of the eyes to see if the door is closed. But so what! I like the look of the big white "X". It makes me feel like a real farmer. And that's what it's about!

Baby Watch

2012-05-18T06:52:00.000-06:00

Three of our four Rex does are "with kit" and will soon deliver. Rabbits have only a 28-32 day gestational period and while they can re-breed within a day of delivery, it's really hard on the does to be carrying a litter while nursing a litter at the same time. Sometimes the number of kits can be 6-10 in a single batch! So we don't keep our bucks in the same cage as the females for that reason.

It has been such a mild spring that we might be able to get two- three litters this year instead of one. I don't breed our girls in the winter or early spring as it's usually very windy and cold in the winter and chilly and damp in the spring. I just don't want to stress the rabbits that much. Plus I really don't want to feed all those babies with store bought food. I'd rather feed them greens from our abundant pastures. But the pastures don't green out with much spark until the end of April or May. So we wait. This year has been exceptionally mild. We might just get a couple of litters before the snow flies again!

At 3-4 pounds a bunny after 12 weeks~ that's a lot of quick meat!

Busy, busy, busy!!!

2012-05-16T14:39:00.000-06:00

We have lots of GREAT things going on here at Mountain Harvest Farm! These greatness-es will each have their own post but let me show a few pics to get the ball rolling!

We now have pigs! Three little pigs! (Well, they're not too little any more. The only thing growing faster than these pigs on this farm are our children!)

We now have a much larger garden spot AND raised beds!!! Two of them (so far)!!!!

My beloved made the chicken coop door- a REAL chicken coop door!!!

We have more chicks. 10 of them! (I bunched them up in the same bin to show all at one time.)

And, see this spot~ This area will have fruit trees planted here~ maybe by the end of this month as well! Plus, we might, probably, hopefully, have a PERIMETER FENCE before this month is over!!!! (At least we will have the posts in place.) Yeay! This is great news because the fencing allows for bigger animals; one's that fit into our sustainable food program. Double Yeay!

More to come....stay tuned! (Triple yeay!)

Spring in Montana

2012-04-11T14:46:00.000-06:00

Well, it's snowing. I don't know why I'm surprised. It was 62 degrees yesterday and beautiful....perfect cloudless day and no adequate words to describe the blue, blue mountain sky. We put our backs into a few chores that would take more than just a couple of hours and have the sore bodies to prove it. My beloved husband began re-staining the front porch. It has needed it for a while and he jumped into the project with both feet. Of course it will take several nice weather days to complete and of course since it is SNOWING today, the rest of the project will be delayed. That's OK. It'll look great when it's done.

I sifted through our potato bin (this box is only 1/2 full of those that are-to-be-planted); sorting the lovely German butterballs into piles of potatoes-we-get-to-eat from potatoes-we-are-going-to-plant this spring from the potatoes-that-get-to-go-to-the -chickens. The pile of potatoes going into the garden is larger than the pile that gets to be eaten. Since we really love these potatoes, it's hard to be without for the several months it's going to take to grow more. But it's always worth the wait. The books state that these nice potatoes are supposed to be best eaten up to just after Christmas. After that they become kind of mealy. But our experience is that they do fine into spring as long as they are kept cool but not frozen. The hardest issue for us is the "don't let them freeze" part. These butterballs are really juicy and therefore seem to be more at risk of freezing while wintering over in our unheated garage. We also have a small box of reds that we will plant this spring as well; can't be without our red potatoes! It must be the Irish in us!

Sauerkraut

2012-04-08T03:11:00.013-06:00

I think most people who make sauerkraut, make it in the fall. But I've gotten into the habit of making in the spring. I do this mostly because I'm lazy, but also, it's easier to accomplish in the spring when it's still too cool to plant anything outside and the crush of harvest isn't looming.

Sauerkraut is really easy to make and it's pretty good for you, too. Cabbage is easy to grow in our climate, even from seed. And our family happens to enjoy sauerkraut a lot so making it is a win/ win food storage skill. I am able to use up any cabbage that starting to show it's age by now plus, my cabbage recipes are becoming fairly exhausted (or maybe I should say that the kids are getting tired of cabbage soup, cabbage salad, steamed cabbage, cabbage and pork, cabbage and chicken.....you get the idea). So sauerkraut is the perfect solution for those few heads of fall cabbage that haven't been eaten yet.

The traditional way to make kraut is to allow the cabbage to ferment in a large crock after preparing the slices, but I don't have a large crock so I just make the kraut in canning jars, one at a time.

You start by slicing the clean head of cabbage into fairly thick slabs (after the large floppy leaves have been removed. I often use these leaves if I'm using the cabbage just after harvest. But usually by this time, the outer leaves can be, um, undesirable.) In the past, I've used a food processor for this part since the slicing is time consuming, but I've found that the processor makes the cabbage pieces too small for my liking and hard scoop out of the crock pot after cooking. I end up loosing a lot of my hard earned sauerkraut because the small, food processed pieces slide off the spoon when transferring to the plate.

So after you slice up about 1/4 of the head you put the cabbage into a very clean Mason jar (or any other type of canning jar....I just call them all Mason jars. I'm kind of weird).

Then you sprinkle salt over the slices and pound the poor cabbage into smithereens. There's no exact measurement for the salt. I just sprinkle several teaspoons over the top of the cabbage.

(I don't have a picture of the cabbage being pounded to smithereens because I didn't have a way of pounding and snapping the picture at the same time. But you can see the instrument of doom in some of the early snaps. It's that wooden thing that looks kind of like a short rolling pin with a handle. Actually, it's the tool that you use when pushing meat into the Kitchen Aid grinder. For some reason I have about 3 of these little gadgets. They come in real handy!) You don't have to pound hard. The pounding really just helps the salt release the natural juices of the cabbage. As you pound, find you can add more and more cabbage to the jar. Just continue to layer the cabbage, sprinkle salt, pound, repeat. Eventually you will have the jar filled with salted and pounded cabbage. The secret is to make sure that you have all the cabbage covered by salty juices when the jar is full.

(This is a hard-to-see picture of juicy, post-pounded cabbage.)

The next step is my favorite. You just store the almost-sauerkraut in an out of the way, semi-warm place. The warmer the storage place, the quicker the fermentation process. I cover mine with the Mason jar lid that has NOT been screwed on.... at all. This way as the cabbage ferments, it can release gases and sometimes a little juice in a safe manner. (If you place the lid on the jar in any way other than just balancing the lid over the mouth of the jar without screwing into place, it will not be "in a safe manner". Over time, the jar will build pressure under that lid and it could actually explode in a "not safe manner", spewing interesting smelling cabbage juice ALL OVER THE PLACE. Don't ask me how I know this. Just take my word for it!)

Anywhoo, after a couple of weeks, you have amazing, great sauerkraut, ready for imbibement. (No, wait. Imbibement is drinking. Is imbibement even a word? OK...forget that. After a couple of weeks, you will have amazing, great sauerkraut to eat.) You can either eat it immediately or place in the refrigerator until you are ready to eat it. By placing the sauerkraut in the 'fridge, it stops the fermentation process so the kraut doesn't make anymore gases and you can safely put the lid on without fear. Plus, the fridge halts the resulting "sourness" to just the exact tartness to our taste.

So there you have it. A cheap, nutritious way to use up waining heads of fall cabbage that is easy on the money bags. My mother would be so proud!

(Sorry. I don't have a picture of the finished product. I have to go clean up a juicy, smelly cabbage mess.)

2012-04-06T13:23:00.007-06:00

We had another dog attack. We were lucky. We only lost one chicken because of our big red rooster.

True to his nature, the rooster saved the day by distracting the dog away from the majority of the flock. (You know, I really don't know anything about what a rooster thinks when he's being attacked. I attribute "manly" thinking to the rooster because he's the "man" of the flock. I just assume that he's thinking "save the girls....save the girls....save the girls" when he is fleeing away from the hens, pulling the dangerous dog with him. My husband gets a chuckle out of my thinking. He says that in reality, the rooster is probably just screaming "WHAT IS THIS!!!! A WILD WOLFE HAS MY FANNY!!! AGAIN!!! RUN! RUN! RUN!
Humph. I don't care what my husband thinks. I prefer to think that the rooster is selflessly caring for his women.)

Unfortunately, he also got the brunt of the attack.

Or at least his tail feathers did.

Again.

I'm glad he was on duty.

I'm sure the girls were glad he was on duty, too.

He'll be OK. Just a few feathers missing.

The dog that "helped himself" is a good dog, usually. He keeps the coyotes away from our neighbor's animals. And we have a really good relationship with our neighbors. I'm sure he won't be back. At least not to eat anymore chicken.

Smells like home

2012-03-30T13:59:00.010-06:00

One of the best recollections I have as a kid growing up in Texas was walking into the house after school to the great aroma of cookies, warm from the oven. My mom is/ was a great cook and I have wonderful memories of her in the kitchen loving us with her display of baked goods for dessert, roasted meats for Sunday supper and huge country breakfasts that would make Ma Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie feel like a slackard . (A lot of people think that loving your family with food promotes childhood obesity. But I can tell you that none of my brothers and sisters were obese or even pudgy during childhood. We were all long and lanky, well, except for Margaret. She was short and lanky.....sorry Margy! I love you! Any subsequent chubbiness on my part, was adult onset and was completely due to subsequent increase in the afore mentioned cookies, brownies, pie.... ) Now here I am, 20 years later, carrying on the tradition of loving my kids with good food, too.

Our weather is chilly, rainy and a bit dreary. And today starts spring break! A whole week of nothing to do but sleep and eat and play and eat and watch movies and eat and maybe visit Grandma and eat......

So I'm whipping up a double batch of "the world's best brownies" other wise known as "Lunch Box Brownies" that I blogged about almost two years ago (to the day.....or I guess I should say to the month since I'm a month and seven days off).

I have made these brownies many times. They are a family favorite and they are almost always gone with in minutes from the oven. I often have to hide them from the kids.

I can hear my sweet middle son now:

Luke- "I love you Mom" (walking up, giving me a big hug while looking around for the source of the good smell behind my back).

"Have I told you how much I love you?"

"Do I smell brownies?"

And so it goes until I give up the hiding place or he scouts them out himself.

Brownies. It definitely smells like home here tonight.

2012-03-27T17:36:00.007-06:00

It's early spring here in Montana.

We often see animals out cruising the fields in the early spring that we don't even get glimpses of except this time of year.

Coyotes are not an uncommon sight, but we don't usually see them in our pastures except in the early spring. The big carnivors are stalking voles and mice and anyother little morsel they can find to feed their bellies this time of year.

I know that they are hungry after a long winter and they are just doing what coyotes do. They haven't bothered our livestock but they still make me kind of nervous.

Sweet rain

2012-03-26T17:05:00.008-06:00

It's a warm-ish rainy evening; 47 degrees. And on the drive home from school, my sweet daughter wistfully commented on how she would love to do something, ANYTHING that didn't have to do with school, or deadlines, or projects before it got dark. So when we got home, she tied on her hiking boots, grabbed a bit of kibble treats for the red puppy and ventured out for the woods next to the house.

(See the slash pile in the background? It's waiting for "the big burn".)

She's really in her element in the forest.

Plus, she loves the rain.

She'll feel better when she comes home.

The woods in the rain always makes life better.

Prom night

2012-03-24T17:07:00.012-06:00

How did this:

Grow into this:

Makes a mother proud.

The winter we didn't have

2012-03-24T10:56:00.007-06:00

This has not been the winter that last year was or what was predicted. We were expecting another big, long, snowy winter but here we are the 4th day of spring and (almost) no snow! The weather has been throwing little temper tantrums. She's not done with us yet. We've had more snow in the past week than we've had all winter. It snows in the morning, then melts by afternoon.

My kids are happy when it melts. It seems that after about the first of March, baseball begins to haunt the brains of 13 and 14 year old boys and no longer should snow occupy the fields and pastures where they could be playing ball.

Well, they just have to be patient. It won't be long now.

And now back to our regulary scheduled program...

2012-03-23T14:22:00.021-06:00

Tonight's supper will be the ever loved BEANS.

Slow cooked beans in the crock pot, smothered with onions and dehydrated Swiss chard with a big ol'fat ham bone (with lots of ham meat clinging to it) just plopped down among them......mmmmm. Nothing better than the smell of cooking beans on a cold, almost winters day.
The aroma reminds me of growing up in Texas. My grandmother always seemed to have a pot of beans bubbling on the back burner in her warm, little kitchen. Our house is fragrant with my memories.

These are actually buckskin beans (which I have never heard of but a friend of mine gave me these and we are eating them, by golly!) They taste great and better than that, the beans we don't eat we are able to plant this spring and have them as part of our sustainable food stash. I have saved back about 3 pounds of the huge pile that we were given to put in the garden come warmer weather.

Along with the beans is a pan of apple dumplings.

We have only one more 20 pound box of apples left in our food storage area (IE: a coolish spot in the garage) and some of those are starting to show their age....a little too wrinkled for out of hand eating. So these apples were transformed into a wonderful dessert of apple dumplings. Drop a little blob of whipped cream on top and you have a dessert fit for a king....or multiple children.

There you have it.

Not a bad way to jump back into blogging after a year's sabbatical......supper!

Here we go again

2011-02-23T07:32:00.000-07:00

National Weather ServiceWednesday, February 23, 2011 5:28 AM Local Time

WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 AM MST THURSDAY...

IMPACTS/TIMING: SNOWFALL AND GUSTY NORTHEAST WINDS WILL BOTH INTENSIFY EARLY THIS EVENING. THE COMBINATION OF SNOW AND WIND WILL PRODUCE WIDESPREAD BLOWING/DRIFTING OF SNOW AND LOCAL BLIZZARD CONDITIONS WITH RAPID REDUCTIONS TO VISIBILITY. THIS WILL CREATE EXTREMELY TREACHEROUS DRIVING CONDITIONS THROUGH THURSDAY. DRAMATICALLY FALLING TEMPERATURES COMBINED WITH CONTINUED GUSTY NORTHEAST WINDS WILL ALSO PRODUCE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS WIND CHILLS TONIGHT THROUGH THURSDAY.

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS: 5 TO 10 INCHES BY THURSDAY MORNING.

* VISIBILITY: LESS THAN ONE QUARTER MILE AT TIMES.

* WIND: NORTHEAST WINDS 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 30 MPH DURING THE DAY. IN THE FLATHEAD VALLEY...NORTHEAST WINDS INTENSIFYING 30 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 45 MPH THIS EVENING. IN THE MISSION VALLEY... NORTHEAST WINDS INTENSIFYING 20 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 30 MPH THIS EVENING. STRONG WINDS WILL CONTINUE INTO THURSDAY.

* WIND CHILL: 10 TO 20 BELOW ZERO WEDNESDAY NIGHT INTO THURSDAY.

IN THE FLATHEAD VALLEY...30 BELOW ZERO THURSDAY MORNING.

* LOCATIONS IMPACTED INCLUDE...FLATHEAD LAKE...FLATHEAD VALLEY...
MISSION VALLEY...POLSON PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW...
BLOWING SNOW...OR ICE ACCUMULATIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING.

STRONG WINDS ARE ALSO POSSIBLE. THIS WILL MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS OR IMPOSSIBLE.

2011-02-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

See these big fat juicy tomatoes that-are-from-another-country-because-Montana-can't-grow-tomatoes-in-the-snow? Aren't they pretty?

My sweet daughter and I found these at the local super market in the organic section of the vegetables. They were on the half price table. They don't look like it but they are on the verge of complete collapse from old age~ all squishy and soft and incontinent. And I bought them. On purpose. These are heritage tomatoes grown organically (at least that's what the sign said). So I'm going to "practice" seed saving with these guys. I've done a little research on saving tomato seeds. But I think I still need practice before I try on the real thing.....not that these are fake but they will provide me with the time to practice before the time crush that is fall.

Pretty soon these red fruits will sacrificed for the greater good: the practice of saving seed.

Stay tuned!!!!

2011-02-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

These area the beets that I planted two weeks ago. It looks like we will be enjoying baby beet greens in our salads in just a couple of weeks!

The Swiss chard I put in is coming along, too. Not quite as fast as the beets, however.

The hens are starting to pull their weight. I gathered 5 eggs today!

dirt

2011-02-10T16:54:00.000-07:00

I was reading another farmer's blog yesterday, and she was telling of her obsession with dirt: dark, moist, rich, dirt. The kind of soil that plantlings seemed to jump out of and grow like mad to produce lovely food for herself and her family. She also cited some research where scientists discovered a type of bacterium called Mycobacterium vaccae which resides in the soil. Apparently scientists believe that exposure to this stuff might work as an antidepressant! This little microscopic powerhouse might also decrease anxiety.

So dirt really does make us feel better! After all these years, I thought it was just me. Back a looooong time ago, when I was single and living in my own house, my wonderful elder, ex-farmer, neighbor caught me laying, fully clothed, in my newly tilled-up-but-not-planted-garden. I was just lying in the freshly turned dirt. It felt so good. I had gotten off shift as a flight nurse in a really busy hospital and it had been an especially hard night. I had decided to change into my garden clothes and plant a few cucumber seedlings before going to bed. It was early spring and the sun was warm and there was a light breeze blowing (I was in Texas.....can you tell?) and the soil had that aroma that newly worked ground emits. The soil was calling to me. So, I laid down in it. The neighbor didn't say a word. He just watched me heal in that little patch of dirt. Then went into his house and commented to his wife how I must have had a bad night. Having owned a farm out in East Texas for many years, he understood the need to lie in the dirt every now and then. Now I know that I'm not the only weirdo who needs to feel the dirt in my hands or feet.

Dirt is healing.

And now there's proof.

2011-02-09T12:53:00.001-07:00

Because I've already chewed up my seed catalogues with constant browsing, I've been getting my farming fix by reading about other people's experiences. I'm reading The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball right now. It's a great read and I'm really enjoying it. One of the lines caught my attention yesterday and I just can't seem to let it go. The main characters were talking about the possible failure of their new farming venture.

"....I would ask Mark if he really thought we had a chance. Of course we had a chance, he'd say, and anyway, it didn't matter if this venture failed. In his view, we were already a success, because we were doing something hard and it was something that mattered to us. You don't measure things like that with words like success or failure, he said. Satisfaction comes from trying hard things and then going on to the next hard thing regardless of the outcome. What mattered was whether or not you were moving in a direction you thought was right." (p. 77)

I think that this reasoning seems so right to me because sometimes I feel like we are spinning our wheels. I know some of our friends are clucking their tongues and shaking their heads at our decisions: not just making all our foods from scratch, but trying to produce the food from scratch as well; some think the way we are bringing up our kids is almost child abuse ("You make your kids get up for swim practice at 6 in the morning? In the summer?"); moving steadily and constantly toward being debt free instead of buying the next great thing on credit; keeping the house temperatures set at 60 in the winter instead of 75; washing dishes by hand instead of using the dishwasher......these are just a couple of weird things we do that are "different". And they are sometimes hard. But we are moving in the direction we feel is right both for us as a couple and for our family. It's hard and it's right.

Something special for my sick boy

2011-02-08T12:34:00.001-07:00

My oldest boy is sick. He is home from school.

He is my 16 year old, 6'4'', #190 baby boy (with a beard) and he has a cold in his nose and a cough in his chest. (It's a little disconcerting to see a wad of TP sticking out of his left nostril. He says it's to stem the flow of mucous. I didn't argue. I wanted to include a picture of this event. He did argue.)

To help him feel better and to boost his immune system, I made him a berry/ banana smoothie. This is significant because we haven't had a blender in the house since 2004. Ours broke during one of the moves. It didn't seem like we used it very often so I just never replaced it. Now we have a new blender and the kids are ecstatic! You'd think I'd just had a new baby! Well, maybe not that ecstatic.

Anyhoo, these are the steps for my sick boy's smoothie-in-the-new-blender:

1. Bananas- Because every sweet-ish smoothie I've ever had to drink had bananas in them and because we have bananas that are beginning to go bad, I cut a 'nana (sorry Nana) in two and blended until smooth (without the skin).

2. Berries- We have a plethora of frozen raspberries. Even though we don't have any berry bushes in our garden (yet), raspberries are so plentiful around here and we have so many good, generous friends, we have many, many frozen tubs of berries in our freezer. Therefore, frozen raspberries is the next ingredient.

3. The next ingredient is......HUCKLEBERRIES!!!! One cannot live in Montana and not have huckleberries in their freezer (if indeed they were dragged, I mean, escorted, by their wonderful husbands up into the wilds to pick berries in the grizzly infested mountains). This picture makes the berries look a little like they might have been gathered from the bottom of the rabbit cage but I assure you, they are huckleberries.....gathered in the wild, grizzly infested, etc.

4. Ice cream- I don't usually include ice cream as an ingredient in our smoothies, but the boy is sick and I want him to feel special. And he saw the huckleberries and wasn't convinced that I hadn't made the trip to the rabbit cages so I included the ice cream to reassure him that I love and care for him and would never do such a thing.

Blend all the above until smooth and wala- an immune booster for my sick boy.

If you look closely you can even see the little flecks of immuno-boosting, vitamin jammed molecules in that fruit drink.

One swallow and he says he's feeling better already!

Even if he's not, I think he's planning on going back to school tomorrow anyway.....just in case those weren't huckleberries after all.

Basil plantlings in the sunlight.

2011-02-08T12:13:00.000-07:00

The clouds have rolled away and the sun shines.

2011-02-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

It's hard to see, but that's not fog. It's snow in the air.

It's snowing like crazy. Not much wind yet. I guess it's still coming. The temperatures aren't too terrible either....... 25 degrees F. At least it's above zero. It seems like this storm is a little late in coming. As soon as the kids get off of school, we are going home to hunker down, stay inside, eat good food, read, listen to music.

I really love weather.

UPDATE 12:38 pm: Just on time the wind has begun to blow. I ran outside to close up the chicken coop and shovel some built up snow from the north foundation of the house. It's probably just my Southern misunderstanding about how winter works, but I don't want the snow packing up against the house too much or too tight. It seems that it could cause wetness and possible water problems with the foundation in the spring when everything begins to melt. So I ran out to do a little "preventative maintenance". (Those who have always lived where it snows a lot will probably make fun of me. So don't tell anyone.) All I know is that it's dang cold out there. It makes me very thankful for the warm house I live in. Can't wait for my chicks to get home!

2011-02-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

We are expecting another storm tonight. Just when the temperatures started to warm up a bit----- it is 29 degrees F right now-----we are going to get blasted again. The snow isn't supposed to be as big of a snow dump but the wind might be a problem.

Here's our weather forecast for the near future:

National Weather Service Sunday, February 06, 2011
WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO 5 PM MST MONDAY FOR THE FLATHEAD VALLEY...
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MISSOULA HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW FOR THE FLATHEAD VALLEY...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO 5 PM MST MONDAY.

* IMPACTS/TIMING: SNOW WILL BEGIN TO FALL THIS EVENING AND CONTINUE THROUGH MONDAY. SNOWFALL IS EXPECTED TO INTENSIFY MONDAY MORNING...BECOMING MODERATE TO HEAVY AT TIMES. ARCTIC AIR WILL BEGIN TO SPILL OVER THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE MONDAY MORNING AS WELL...PRODUCING GUSTY NORTHEAST WINDS AND BLOWING/DRIFTING OF SNOW. THE COMBINATION OF SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW COULD QUICKLY REDUCE VISIBILITIES AT TIMES THROUGH MONDAY...PARTICULARLY DURING THE MORNING COMMUTE. HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITIONS SHOULD BE ANTICIPATED DUE TO SNOW...BLOWING SNOW AND SLICK SNOW-COVERED ROADWAYS. LOCATIONS SOUTH OF FLATHEAD LAKE WILL SEE SNOW BY MONDAY AFTERNOON...BUT IMPACTS DUE TO SNOW AND WIND ARE EXPECTED TO BE MINIMAL.

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS: 2 TO 5 INCHES IN THE FLATHEAD VALLEY...LOCALLY UP TO 7 IN WHITEFISH AND COLUMBIA FALLS. SNOW ACCUMULATIONS MAY BE DIFFICULT TO MEASURE DUE TO BLOWING AND DRIFTING. 1 TO 2 INCHES CAN BE EXPECTED SOUTH OF FLATHEAD LAKE.

* WINDS: WINDS WILL BEGIN TO INCREASE MONDAY MORNING BECOMING NORTHEAST SUSTAINED AT 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 40 MPH THROUGH MONDAY AFTERNOON...MAINLY IN THE NORTHERN FLATHEAD VALLEY.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW OR BLOWING SNOW ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. STRONG WINDS ARE ALSO POSSIBLE.

THIS WILL MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS OR IMPOSSIBLE.

I'm not going to tell the kids we have a storm coming. They get all excited about the the possibility of school closing. But this is Montana. School never closes. I do need to get out to the little red coop and fortify the animals. It might be a long night for them.

2011-02-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

(This is a picture of me milking my Jersey cow in my barn clothes with all my little kitties surrounding me. Notice, no poo on the floor or on my shoes or spilled milk or messes of any kind. Yup, this is my future!)

I braved the cold to do my once a month grocery shopping at the one of the big box stores we have in the next town. Grocery shopping: it's a love/ hate relationship. I usually buy dairy products and a few snacks at Costco but not much else. Because of all the recent talk of the increase in food prices, I was going to the store to buy milk, cheese, butter and cream and to update my "price book". Years ago I discovered The Frugal Zealot: Amy Dacyzyn. She introduced me to the price book which I'm sure has saved me $1000's over the years. Essentially, it's a list of every item I usually buy and how much each costs at the different stores I frequent and I put all that information in a small spiral notebook. It takes a lot of time to establish but once in place it's easy to update. This way, I know I get the best value for my hard earned dollar (or in this case, my husband's hard earned-away-from-the-family dollar).

So armed with my price book, I descended upon the big box store...... and I left a little teary. Food has gone up. Way up. Most of the items I purchase have increased in price by at least 15%....some even more. I didn't even look at the out of season fruit and vegetables (IE: tomatoes, melons, berries) since we usually steer clear of those items anyway. But butter and cheese.....whew! Dairy products seemed to be especially hard hit with increases. Skim milk has gone from $1.99/ gallon to $2.20/ gallon. A .21 cent/ gallon doesn't seem too bad but when you go through milk like we do, it's a hard hit to the budget. Butter is up to almost $3.00/ pound. Cream went up to over $7/ quart so I left without cream. (It's a luxury anyway.) And these aren't even the more expensive organic dairy products.

Yikes! What's a family to do?

GET A COW, my heart screams, GET A COW!!!!!

But we are far away from that possibility. We do own land, now, and that's a good start. Plus, I have 4 wild, willing, milk-drinking, milking partners in the form of kids; that's good. But we don't have a barn, yet. My husband put his foot down and said no large animals that need to be over-wintered without a barn. He was raised on a farm so I'm going to defer to his judgement. Besides, I just can't see myself trying to milk a cow in a field with snow up to my eyeballs. And I don't want to stress out any of the animals in our care by not having winter quarters for them. It's just too cold. And I'm just too much of a weeny.

So maybe next year. In the mean time, I make phone calls to prospective milk cow sellers, and talk to every elder I can find that milked cows in their childhood and brain storm with girlfriends who also want cows.

It takes a village.

2011-02-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

minus 23 degrees this morning!

Pretty dang chilly for this Texas girl!

2011-01-31T07:41:00.000-07:00

It is drop dead gorgeous outside.

And -18 degrees.

It' so cold that my breath just about freezes in my chest when I take the red puppy out for her morning constitution. The sun is blinding and air hums with brilliance. What a great day! All this sunshine energizes me. Now what can we do outside in negative degree temperatures?

First of all, breakfast!

The kids are off from school today and are still sleeping in, those lazy bones. So after a big breakfast of huckleberry pancakes and a pound of sugar cured bacon (we have a friend who we get our pork from- he raises all his meat the way we would here on our farm and then sugar cures the hams and bacon. The meat is really good and since I know how he handles the animals, I'm happy to buy pork from his family) we are going to venture outside to have some fun. Maybe cross country skiing! We have been so busy with basketball-scouts-volleyball-babysitting-school stuff that we haven't XC skied this whole winter.

But for now, the house is quiet and the red puppy is contentedly chewing on an old bone. I think I'll put on another sweatshirt, get a big mug of coffee and catch up on some correspondence......and warm up.