Wintery Weather and Hunting Wrap Up

On this day after Veteran's Day, thank you all who have served or are currently serving.

This post has two parts - first a farm-life update, then a deer-hunting update.

We are in our sixth decade (yikes!) of life in Minnesota (well okay, one was in Wisconsin, but it's pretty much the same) so winter should no longer be able to sneak up on us.  So why are we not prepared for 10 degree nights and snow that needs to be shoveled? 

Cold and snow does not curb Hoover's enthusiasm for an outing!

The view from the milking stand this afternoon.

Water is always a priority for the animals, no matter what time of year - it just gets more difficult to provide with the cold weather.  The pigs in particular present a problem with that. 

The chickens are all together in the Winter coop now, and their waterer is moved indoors. The three adopted hens, Barak, Speckles, and Rocky are always the first on the roost in the afternoon - kind of funny how they hang out together although they came from two different homes.  Many of the hens are in various stages of  moulting so the coop is full of feathers and egg production is very low.

The goats have had some changes with their living arrangements.  Periwinkle has moved in with her big brother Forest and is none too happy about it, while Ranger was most pleased to move in with the does.  He is an expert at pulling the hay out of the feeder.

After Opening Weekend Report by Kevin:

Last Monday was a pretty productive day for us with three more deer added to the hanging rafters in the garage, one six point buck and two fawns. Then on Thursday I was able to harvest a fork type buck. Then everything seemed to shut down. There were 5 of us hunting Saturday and we saw a total of 1 deer. Not sure if it was the cold and snow or what. It snowed Saturday night into Sunday morning and all we did Sunday morning was go out and pull stands down. With all the traveling we did on our property to remove stands we saw a very few tracks in the snow.

We were very fortunate to harvest a total of 13 deer, so we have the freezers full and ready to provide us plenty of great meals through the year. In our case here, Ardis and Rollie did most all the cutting up of the venison, which I am so grateful for. But once again the very best part of this year was getting together with family and friends. We continued some traditions and may have started a couple new ones, only time will tell, right, because that's what traditions are all about. So we are all done hunting for 2018 and thoughts and talking about what we will do different in 2019 has already started.

We may not have a post for a couple of weeks, but we will be back - until then, be well friends!