Bored!

Today, all is packed and waiting for the move. December 6th is only 12 days away, and all the hard packing is done. Nothing left to do, but take the two dogs for a snowshoe today. I had to kick Boots off the bed, but he came, and enjoyed himself.

This is probably too many pictures, but there is not that much time left on the Acreage. A guy has to make do with what time is left.

Coming home from church this morning, we had to stop on the road for a cow and calf moose. They were in the middle of the road eating road salt. The calf was down on his front knees. kind of cute! you know where my camera was, right? Yep, at home on the kitchen table. Grrrr.

The sun is pretty far south now.

 What am I doing here? The bed is much warmer!

 Snow is tasty!

 Can we get going? Why isn't brooklyn breaking trail? She is built like a snow plow!

 I think I buried a bone somewhere around here.

 What's this about me being a wide load? besides you buried the bone over there.

 Over here?

 Let me show you.

 I think it's here.

 Or maybe here.

 Never mind my slave will get me another!

 Oh, give it up! The bone is gone!

OK, OK, It is Pretty

The short term memory loss must have kicked in as I don't remember all the details of snow blowing 400 feet of driveway and 2500 square feet of deck. Nor do I remember the 2 1/2 hours of exercise, much.
(If you believe that, I heard of a pretty good bridge for sale cheap).

It warmed up from the -28C (-18F) to -10C (14F) today so I decided to find the snow shoes in a packed and stacked garage.

Besides, Brooklyn needed some exercise. Boots elected to stay inside on the bed.

 This is the backside of a deer going by the deck

 50+ cm (20 inches) of snow so far and it is only November 23!

 Do I have to break trail, Boss?

 Yep, we'll get some weight off you somehow!

 Never follow a tired dog!

 Can't a person have some privacy? Really!

 The young fawns of this year are already belly dragging. Not a good sign!

 Homeward bound, on the trail.

 The shoes are 50+ years old, and still going strong.

Yep, I guess it is pretty!

Last Snowshoe of the Year, I Hope!

The weather is forecast to improve drastically over the next 4 to 5 days, with temperatures coming back up to the +10C range in the daytime and down to about freezing at night. With the sun high in the sky, the white stuff should disappear in a hurry, I hope.

If you take the shoes off and step off the trail you sink about 3 feet. Without the shoes, it would be very tough going.

It looks like the mouse from  Drunken Mouse either sobered up, or has become more focused. He was certainly having no trouble keeping up on top. 

This has seemed to be a very long winter, with snow coming early and staying late. Plus we have had a lot of it this year. 

Dog and Snowshoes

We have a visitor for four days while my son and family are at a conference in Banff. Max, or Mad max as we call him is a very tall, long legged 2 year old Lab with a LOT of energy.

One solution was to take him snowshoeing, at the same time as packing a few trails for the resident deer population

 You will see that Brooklyn is missing. Even though she is built like a snow plow with a pointed front end and a wide butt, she has shorter legs than Max. Brooklyn decided that life was better sleeping in the hay shelter.

 The snow shoes handled the brush really well.

 After about an hour, Max's butt was dragging

 Come on, boss, let's go home.

First Snowshoe of the Year

These are Ojibwa shoes that are about 45 years old. They are still going strong, although some of the babiche is getting a little thin. They have many, many miles on them from locations such as Kenora, Iroquois Falls, Thunder Bay and Whitecourt. In fact, they will likely outlast me. I was tempted to get a set of aluminum shoes, but decided that the natural quiet of wood and hide is preferable.

Brooklyn far enjoys the packed trail rather than being a snowplow. She is kind of built to push snow, with narrow shoulders and a wide butt.

 Come on boss! hurry up! I need to go back for a power nap.

 This is noon again and this is about the brightest it gets at this time of year. It's tough to get good photos when the lighting is flat.

 I thought I saw a squirrel! How come he stays on top and I sink? It's not fair!

More Snowshoeing

With another +5C day, it was time to get out and do things, this time with Camryn and of course, the dogs. Camryn found it pretty easy going for a while.

Brooklynn, on the other hand, was pretty much bogged down.

Hills are a little more difficult.

And of course, running on snowshoes can end up with a face plant!

Snowshoeing

Today was AJ's first try at snowshoes. It was too windy for riding Tucker, but we did walk her, so we thought we would take a little walk around the acreage on snowshoes.

The dogs seemed to like the experience although the crust wasn't always solid enough to hold them up.

Dogs also like to walk on the heels of the shoes for some reason.

We didn't get too far when one of the straps broke. AJ found it pretty deep walking out.

Back to Work

The infamous horse trough needed to be filled, again. It seems that about every second day I put the 100 foot hose in, connect it to the faucet and wait 15 minutes for it to fill, then drain the hose and repeat in 2 days. Three horses sure do drink a lot when they are on dry hay!

It was time to check the upper pasture for broken fence wire or moose knock downs. Today, everything was copacetic.  Brooklynn was bounding and trying to keep up with not much success. She is up to 95 pounds, so is getting more exercise, like it or not.

The top of the hill in the distance is about 10 miles away. Today, it was so clear (and cold) you could almost reach out and touch it.

After two days of -30C (-22F) the horses were content to soak up some rays. It had warmed up nicely to -10C (+14F). I used the pick axe and rake to pile up 9 wheelbarrow loads of horse poop and tomorrow when it gets up to the freezing mark, I will haul it to the compost pile. I thought that I would save everyone from a picture of the piles. It ain't pretty!

Incidentally, Biz is telling Boots by her foot position, that one step closer and we are going to play tag!

Out Side Sunday

After 2 days of high temperatures, +8C (+46F) and +10C (+50F) the snow pack shrunk by about half. The new snowblower now has about 5 gallons of gas through it and our narrow, one lane road is back to three lanes, including the ditches. All the big snow drifts along the walks are now cleared away and the paths to the chicken coop and horse area are now cleared. It's a lot easier with a snow blower! Brooklynn is generally content in sitting still and watching the activities.

The temperature dropped back to -22C (-6F) this morning, so after church I decided to strap on the old snow shoes and go see what trees got knocked down in the wind. There were a few small ones, but nothing major. My shoes are Ojibway bush shoes which I have had for about 50 years. Some of the babiche is getting worn so I guess this summer I had better restring parts of them.

I stayed up very well, but Brooklynn had a tough time. She was basically belly dragging for about a half mile and did not want to get off my trail. Before the warm days, there were only 2 wires showing on the fence which gives an idea how fast the snow will compact.

Boots on the other hand could stay on top. That's him in the distance sort of laughing at Brooklynn.
This was my "nothing" weekend. Saturday, I fed the critters and did nothing. Today, I went to church, shoveled the walks and did nothing. I did snooze a bit on both days, watched a movie with Elaine and Camryn and did a lot of nothing. It felt good!