Just Another Snow Day

 

My day started on Saturday with lots of bundling up with layers of warm clothing as I headed out the door, with Zuni, our German Shepherd and Dobbie, my Chiweenie. I filled a water bottle with hot water for Apache’s warm breakfast mash. And we trudged up the hill, through the snow, to the barn, to feed and water the goats, llamas and horse. Mustang Sally is a fair weather Chihuahua and chose to stay back inside the warm house. I don’t blame her.

And Dobbie would like to stay in the house, too, but she won’t let me go anywhere out of her sight, so she patiently waits for me to bundle her up in a warm coat and then out we go.

“Hurry up, Mom. I’m cold!”

When we get up to the barn, everyone is waiting for us….or rather, for me to feed them.

Zuni can be such a spaz when it comes to snow. She loves it.

Apache is glad when I finally gather up Zuni and get her secured in her paddock behind the barn. “Hurry up. I’m hungry!”

I let Apache out of her stall so she can run around and roll in the snow for a few minutes and then she comes back to me, snorting and blowing, for breakfast.

“Ok, Mom. I got the Ya Ya’s out. Now I’m ready to eat. Bring it on.”

I get the llamas, goats and horse fed and watered and then head back down the hill to the house. “Are we done now, Mom?”

“No Dobbie. I still have to take care of the chickens”

“Bummer. Brrrr”

I clear a section for the chickens so I could spread out some scratch for them, and then pour some hot water into their frozen water bucket to melt the ice. The chickens are so happy to see me and the day is starting to warm up a little, so I decide to have a seat on my Adirondack chair and hang out in their coop for a little while.

Watching them peck and scratch while they eat their cracked corn and millet is very relaxing.

Their cooing and clucking is very calming.

Paul Revere kept an eye on me.

What’s up with that wild spikey do?

We have two other Blue Wyandottes, that are both hens, and one is the dark blue/black like Paul Revere, but the other one is a lovely silvery grey color. So pretty!

These Blue Wyandottes are huge! They are even bigger than our Silver laced Cochins.

Makes me wonder what breeds of chickens Privett’s Hatchery bred to get this rare color of Wyandotte.

I love the black and gold markings on my Golden laced Wyandotte.

I started off with 5 Golden laced Wyandotte chicks, and now I’m wishing that I didn’t sell 4 of them, leaving me with just this one beautiful hen.

These girls eyed me up as soon as I sat down in my chair.

Don’t they sort of look like Charlie’s Angels?

 

They made it clear they wanted to come over and visit.

But I was sitting in an area of the coop that I hadn’t cleared of snow yet.

They had to get brave enough to climb over the snow drift and head over to me.

Which they did.

And were soon hopping up into my lap for some cuddling.

                                               I love my chickens.

But soon it began snowing again and the temperature dropped and it was time to go inside to warm up.

The day before I had made a crock pot of Green Chile Pinto Bean Stew, so I had a tasty bowl of that for breakfast. Everyone knows stew is always better the next day. And it was.

I followed it up with a Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bar that I had made the night before.

Mmmmm!

A great way to spend a snow day, don’t you agree?

Sunday Stills ~ Canine Companions

 

This week’s Sunday Stills Challenge is to share recent photos of our special canine companions.

(Don’t mind the intensely barren backgrounds in my photos. We haven’t had a drop of rain since last August. Yes, that’s no rain at all for past 8 months. Everything is super dry, dusty and dead. Can someone send us some of your rain, please?)

We have two canine companions.

Zuni is a 3 year old female German Shepherd that my husband bought when she was just a puppy.

And Dobbie is a 3 year old female Chihuahua/Daschund mix (Chiweenie) that I adopted from a local animal shelter a year and half ago.

Zuni is my husband’s dog and she spends her days outside up at the barn watching over our llamas and goats. We bring her in the house at night to sleep. Zuni is very sweet and affectionate, but also very hyper, and has a very short attention span. She is also super smart when she is focused. Ranchman John does obedience training to give Zuni something to focus on. And Dobbie is pretty good at keeping her in line, too. 

Dobbie is my doggie soul mate. We are very close and we go everywhere together. She rarely ever leaves my side. One of the aspects I love about her is how content she is to do whatever it is I am doing, whether that is feeding the chickens, horse, llamas and goats, scooping poop, running errands, hiking, camping, going for a road trip, or just cuddling on the sofa or bed.

Dobbie’s always up for an adventure and some fun.

Dobbie may be small, but she’s also a tough and rugged mighty dog and she can keep up with the best of them, 

and she can also run like the wind….and look freaky doing it. lol!

Dobbie and Zuni are not only our canine companions but they are each other’s, too.

What would life be like without our canine companions?

Sunday Stills ~ Letter W

 

 This week’s Sunday Stills Challenge is to photograph subjects that begin with the letter ‘W’.

Here is what I came up with:

    Water Fun on Christmas Day for my daughter, Jen.

 

 

                       Winter Wonderland for my dog Zuni

 

                                                             Whiskers on my Mare Apache

 

 

 

 

 

 

                  Wine Envy from my Flock of Chickens.

Well That Was Unexpected

 

Yesterday’s weather report called for temperatures of 25-30F degrees with partly cloudy skies…and winds of only 10-15mph. There was no prediction of any snow at all. Not even a slight chance of snow was predicted.

I was thinking…”Yippee! We’re going to thaw out around here finally”. The sun was shining in the eastern sky and the sky was a beautiful baby blue.

Apache was in her paddock enjoying the mellow morning and I was doing some barn chores, when all of a sudden…..

All Hell Broke Loose!

I felt strong gusts of wind vibrating the barn and very quickly, it became darker within. I looked outside and the sky was full of furiously blowing white snow, blowingly horizontal!

I could just barely see the eastern sky and was surprised to be able to see the same blue sky and sunshine I had just seen a few minutes earlier! But quickly my view was cut off by snow so thick that I wasn’t even able to see my house, just down the hill.

What the heck?! Where did this crazy snow blizzard come from?! Were the weather people playing video games and munching cheese doodles when this cold front storm moved across their satellite equipment?!

We totally were not expecting any snow storms yesterday!

Even Zuni was perplexed!

And the weird weather continued…….about an hour after the mini-blizzard started, the sun came out, even though the snow kept falling!

Apache and Zuni were also confused about such odd weather.

And the rest of the evening, the snow continued to blow until the sun dropped behind the mountains and the sky became dark.

Apache was very grateful to be invited to spend the night in the barn and I was worried about the appointments we had the next day.

This morning, Ranchman John, after driving home from the night shift in the morning, seeing how horrible the roads were, insisted on driving me and our kidlets to our appointments in his truck. And I was very grateful. We had only received several inches from the storm the day before, but  by morning, many of the roads in our area were covered in evil black ice and glistening sheets of white ice!

Where were the road crews that usually do a pretty good job of keeping our roads clear?

I bet they were taken by surprise from this sneaky storm, too!

The county road that goes past our neighborhood is extremely hilly and at one point we crested over a hill and we’re confronted by a sheet of thick white ice on the steep downhill side! We tried going down in low gear, but started to fish tail as we had no traction, so we threw caution to the wind and moved over to the oncoming traffic side of the road, which was almost clear of the sheet of ice. We could see all the way down the hill and could see if any traffic was coming our way, but it still felt disconcerting driving on the wrong side of the road. But the risk was much less than trying to drive on a sheet of ice going down a steep hill, with a stop sign at the bottom.

We finished all our appointments in Albuquerque, which by the way had no snow, nor ice at all, by late afternoon and by the time we turned down our county road all the treacherous ice had melted.  We were relieved, but also feeling concerned and annoyed with the weather folks for failing to report this phantom storm. They’ve always done a pretty good job, until yesterday. So this makes us wonder what other big storms they won’t warn us about in the future.

So, how well do the weather folks in your area score? Do they often make mistakes? Do the mistakes tend more towards reporting good weather when you end up with storms or in reporting storms when you end up with none?