A beautiful Winter Wanderland....

 January 15, 2024

The snowshoes are out and in use...finally!

It has been an incredibly long, overcast and dreary stretch of days. Seems like it has been months since we've had a full sunny day. Everyone is missing the sun. Friday was sunny, as was today. Sunny days are especially savoured as they have been so rare of late!! The sunshine causes prisms of light to reflect off of the snow, like myriads of diamonds have been strewn across the surface. 

We had a good dump of snow over the past weekend, and temperatures are staying down enough to ensure we will be keeping it. Today, we drove around the lake and could see where folks have been going out along the edges to ice fish, and the entire surface of the lake is completely frozen over. It was -11C this morning, perfectly in the -10 to -15C (14F - 5F) range of temperature that I love. Cold enough to need a few extra woolies, but not so cold that your eyelashes freeze together!

I spent a bit of time in my sewing room on the grey days, the rainy days, the muddy days..... I tore my fabric stash out, reorganized and tidied it up. It is a pleasure to open the cupboard doors now and just look at it! I have also been doing a little sewing on some projects, and have a Fair Isle cardigan on the needles, just starting into the colour work around the neckline. 

There is a good padding of new snow over the crust formed when it rained on the previous snow. The depth of snow is encouraging the deer to head to yards, and there are deer tracks dragging through the snow everywhere. On our little jaunt today, we saw 6 deer cross the road just as we came out of the driveway.

We tramped around and picked up the SD cards from the trail cameras this afternoon. There wasn't much activity on the cameras during the miserable weather, but now we are seeing a few critters. We captured a couple of nice shots of our local fox.

He and she, (we are pretty sure there is a pair) make the rounds regularly. They always take advantage of any packed trail, and their tracks are always visible in the morning, coming and going along the drive, after any light skiff of snow.

Sun, sun, sunny sunshine!!

Finally, the pall has lifted and we have sunshine. It has been such a long stretch of grey, sunless weather. With cool temperatures, and not much snow, it is a good time to get out and get some more wood cut. We are working on wood for the 25/26 heating season.

The winter so far, has not made much of an inroad on our woodpiles. Unheard of, that some days in late December, we actually let the fire go out from afternoon to the next morning.  

We are harvesting beech trees. They are all dead and dying from the Beech Bark Fungus Disease, and lots are too far gone for firewood, and dangerous to fall, so unless they are a hazard to trails or structures, we leave them and let nature take its course. 

After bringing up a couple of loads of firewood from the barn woodshed this morning, to restock the back porch, off we went to see if the tree dropped yesterday, had come down overnight.

Timbeeerrrrr!

It was making ominous cracking sounds, lodged up in neighbouring trees, when we left yesterday. Hubby tried winching it off the stump with the ATV, but it was too heavy, so we left. Thankfully, it was down this morning, so more stringent measures were avoided. (tractor)

That big log to the left is a gigantic poplar that has been there for ages.

It got cut into firewood lengths, and the 'go-fer' (me) rolled, dragged, end-for-ended each piece over closer to the trail so it could be loaded into the trailer for transport. All the bending and lifting is great exercise and a way to whittle off those Christmas pounds. We keep telling ourselves that we have to cut smaller trees though, as hefting the bigger chunks into the trailer is a little hard on these old bods!

There was a day, (oh glorious youth!) when we would have worked away at it all day, felling, cutting and transporting with breaks for water and snacks.....We are a little wiser now, and know when it is time to stop for the day, because we'd really like to be able to move tomorrow!!