{"id":9310,"date":"2022-03-02T18:56:26","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T23:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=9310"},"modified":"2022-03-02T18:56:26","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T23:56:26","slug":"9310","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2022\/03\/02\/9310\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The sun is out and the birds are singing<\/p>\n

I especially noticed this when I went to Homestead Mills to buy feed this morning. While we were loading up, the sparrows in the warehouse were singing very <\/em>noisily. It’s the first time all winter for this to happen so we smiled and said it was a sign spring is surely coming. We are practicing what we preach, stocking up on feed, farm seed, fuel, and propane, along with the usual dry goods and food items, including pet food. Even if the grid doesn’t get taken down by Russia or we end up in World War III, we know prices are going to continue to rise and some items become harder and harder to find. Today we got a fill-up on our 1,000-gallon propane tank and the 250-gallon tank we use to heat the greenhouse in the spring and fall. Yep, prices have sure climbed, already, but we felt the need to buy anyway. But, when the truck driver left, he also left bad ruts in our driveway’s snowpack. Will plowed the drive again, trying to remove that loose snow. But when I went out to mail seed orders today, it was bad, going out. So, I called Will and told him it probably could be plowed again, which he did. But, when David came over, before going to work, he said the drive was awful.<\/p>\n

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Will and Hondo, plowing the snowpack off the driveway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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All that snow in front of the bulldozer’s blade was packed down on the driveway, turning to “quick-snow.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This afternoon, with the sun shining brightly, Will climbed on Old Trusty and began bulldozing as much of the winter snowpack off the drive as possible. Here, the snow packs down between plowings. Then, come early spring, the top freezes into a softer layer and under that is a relatively deep layer of what we call sugar snow. It’s very granular and easy to get stuck in or sucked off the drive. So, he wanted to scrape as much of this off as possible as our farm fuel truck is due to come soon, and he didn’t want Jim to get stuck. Of course, Hondo had to go with him to protect against tigers, elephants, and bears in the woods! (It must have worked, as Will didn’t see any of the above critters.)<\/p>\n

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There’s a donkey in there somewhere. Right now, all you can see of my planter is little donkey ear tips!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I was doing chores this morning, I noticed the ears of my donkey planter in the front yard sticking up out of the snow. Wow, only the tips are showing! We can gauge spring melting by his visible parts, ears, head, neck, body, and finally, feet! I guess it’s early spring, as all I can see is ear tips. Ha ha. — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sun is out and the birds are singing I especially noticed this when I went to Homestead Mills to buy feed this morning. While we were loading up, the sparrows in the warehouse were singing very noisily. It’s the first time all winter for this to happen so we smiled and said it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,13,17,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9314,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310\/revisions\/9314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}