Here we go again

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.

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!!!!

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

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.

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

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.

The clouds have rolled away and the sun shines.

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!

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.

(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.

minus 23 degrees this morning!

Pretty dang chilly for this Texas girl!