It has been bitter cold on the homestead this month, with most days staying only in the single digits or lower! It seems to have been snowing nearly every single day too and we’ve reached 150 inches of snow already this year.
Thankfully all the animals have survived the frigid weather. It’s definitely not fun doing the farm chores in this weather but there is also a lot less to do! Landon has been ice fishing to break up all the snow plowing. And we’ve been ice skating at the local rink too. We can’t wait for warmer winter weather next month…hopefully!
Check out what we’ve still been doing despite the cold and snow…
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A Season Of Rest
One thing I do love about winter is that it is a forced season of rest. There isn’t much going on, on the homestead and off! Plus, with a new baby arriving in just a few weeks, it’s nice to soak in the extra lounging and sleep before it is gone for a while.
When spring comes, more specifically temperatures above 30 degrees, there is going to be so much to do on the homestead. We have two deer that have been hanging for a few months now because they are too frozen to process. Once they thaw out a bit, it’s butchering day!
Then, we also have to clean out all the chicken coops and rabbit rooms once things start to melt. The poop and pee freeze and just pile up all winter long. It’s a gross mess when it all starts to thaw out. For the health of our animals, we need to clean out the pens asap when spring comes.
Plus, that doesn’t include seed starting and prepping the garden, and also larger projects like creating a driveway. There’s lots of work ahead so we are going to relax now while we can!
Disc Golf Course
One super fun thing that arrived this month was Landon’s nine disc golf baskets. We are putting a disc golf course on our land, a dream of Landon’s, with some extra money from the budget.
As soon as the snow melts and the temperatures rise, you can bet that Landon will be out creating the course and practicing on it every day. It will be fun to have those trails through our 80 acres too! More updates on this to come, I am sure.
Switching Out Our Wood Cook Stove
Heating our house this winter has been a learning experience. It’s our first full winter in the UP so we were anxious to see how the tiny house held up.
Last year when we moved into our tiny house in February, we realized that there was not enough insulation so this summer we added a bunch more when we resided the house. We do still unfortunately lose quite a bit of heat through the floors and few other problem areas. We are going to see what we can improve on this summer.
Our main source of heat this winter has been a wood pellet stove, which has done quite well for us! The downside to it is the maintenance it requires and buying so many bags of wood pellets.
We also had a wood cookstove in our house that was our backup heat source when the power went out. However, we struggle on windy days to get the fire going. The wind pushes all the smoke straight back into our house and it’s miserable.
You may remember a mini wood stove we purchased when we first moved in. We decided to bring that back into the house and move out the wood cookstove. It has been doing a better job and we think we know the solution now to the wind blowing in (some parts we need to purchase).
We’re still debating on the most cost-effective option of heating our house next winter but it will probably be a combination of the woodstove and the wood pellet stove. The pros to the pellet stove are that it is no maintenance like stoking the fire, especially at nighttime!
Sewing Final Touches and Harmony Turns 1!
I sewed the curtains for our addition, and we finished getting Harmony’s loft bed ready. She’ll be moving up there to sleep on her first birthday, which is the last day of the month.
I can’t believe how fast time has gone by…one year with our daughter and almost one year living on the homestead! We have so much to be thankful.
Should We Tap Maple Trees Soon?
We want to tap our maple trees this year but with the baby due at the beginning of March, right around the same time that we would tap them, we might hold off this year.
What do you think? Should we still try our hand at maple syrup this year or are we getting in over our heads?
Pike Missing
One of our barn kitties, Pike, went missing for a few days. I’m not going to lie; I was extremely worried and thought he might have died. It is bitter cold outside, and I thought he might not have been able to get back into the barn.
Thankfully he turned up one morning and I was grateful! I used to hate cats with a passion, and so to see myself so emotional over one of them, I realized how much I do love those barn cats of ours!
Preserving Eggs
We have an overabundance of eggs, it’s actually quite hard to believe! In the winter, chickens don’t lay as many and as often because there is less daylight. We had only been getting one or two eggs a day from our older flock.
When our new flock started laying, the winter didn’t seem to phase them at all! Now we are getting about two dozen a day, which is way too many for us to eat! We don’t have the farmer’s market or farm stand to sell them at right now either, so we have loved being generous to friends and family.
However, we still can’t keep with them. So, I decided to freeze as many as I needed to preserve them. Maybe next winter those frozen eggs will come in handy.
I’ve avoided doing this before because I’m not the biggest fan of preserved eggs, especially frozen ones, but it is a good new skill for me to learn. And hopefully, in the future, we will have a freeze dryer to preserve them, a dream of mine!
Thanks for hanging out this month and I hope you are staying warm wherever you are! Let me know how you are enjoying this season of rest in the comments below.
Kelsey at GoodPointGrandma
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