A Cozy Snowy Day - February 25, 2022 @goldenoakfarm

On Friday morning I was up at 3:45AM and the snow hadn’t started due to virga effect. But it started drifting down by 4AM and when I went out to do the barn cats at 7:15AM we had a good 6” and it was coming down. I swept the steps and the front walk and got the cats done.

My helper friend had called and said the plows hadn’t come through and he couldn’t make it.

When I got back, I loaded the woodstove to keep it toasty in the office. The masonry heater had gotten a good thermal load from the night fire and lasted all day until about 3PM.

I think I’ve done too much over the last week because I was crashed when I got up on Friday morning. I spent the day on the couch watching the Atlas Shrugged trilogy.

It was snowing pretty hard all morning so I had a few lamps on.

I had filled the birdfeeders when I did the cats and mid morning I looked out and saw this huge flock of birds on the ground. The male cardinal was there too.

The flock was bigger black birds and the little juncos kept to the peripheral edges. There were lots of little birds up on the rope and wire.

Then I caught a stripe on a wing, so I looked closer. The whole flock of big birds were redwing blackbirds. My helper friend had told me he had heard a redwing last Friday when he was here.

So I zoomed in on them and sure enough, there was red on the males wings in addition to the little color on the females. They were out there all day until dark and emptied the feeders ¾ down. I’ll have to fill them again on Saturday.

I have always liked the fern with the fairy. I originally put it there because it sticks out farther than she does and it would protect her.

Late morning Tom showed up in the truck. He was out there until 11PM Thursday night and succeeded in getting it running well enough to plow! He’d taken it home and left his van here.

He says it’s still prone to flooding out when running at a low rpm so it still needs work. But he got the plowing done. I called and cancelled the plow guy. He came back out late afternoon and ran the snowblower around. My son did the shoveling. So we are in good shape after the storm.

On Saturday, I hope to finish the stuff I’d planned to do on Friday. Plus I need to either start transcribing my garden notes from 2021 or washing the seedling trays from last year, or some of both.