Sunday, November 18, 2012

A Winter's Day

As the days grow shorter and the temperatures drop, we're stuck inside more often and most people assume we'd get cabin fever. Well, G gets a bit of cabin fever, and I get a bit of annoyed at not having any quiet alone time because he and the dog are always stuck inside with me (not sure if that counts as cabin fever or not LOL).

A typical winter day looks like this:

  • 8-10a: try to ignore that the freak dog is whining to be let out, one of us eventually gets up to open the door and gets the fire & coffee going
  • 10-noon: the other one gets up & we get breakfast going, since the days are short there's no real use getting up before the sun
  • Noon-4ish: do the outside chores while we have light. Normally this is firewood-related or shoveling snow, but sometimes it's a trip into Manley or cutting lumber for indoor projects, etc.
  • 4-ish: when it starts getting too dark or cold to be outside, we'll either work on the indoor projects, or research/plan future projects, or general housekeeping for a few hours. If it's been a really cold/hard day outside, we'll just veg... G gaming on the XBox/PS3, and me reading or playing a PC game (or napping).
  • 9-ish: we'll cook & eat dinner
  • 10p & 3a:  "magic hour" when we have unlimited bandwidth on the satellite, so we'll either watch something on Netflix/Hulu (movie or TV), or do any large downloads (like updates, PDF books, or YouTube). If the satellite uplink isn't cooperating, we might watch a DVD, play a game, read, or go to bed early
  • 2-4a: Bank the fire and go to bed
Since I'm a chronic insomniac & ultra-light sleeper, I'm usually the one who gets up first (darn dog!!) and goes to bed last. Since G sleeps like the dead, he's usually only the first up if I'm totally exhausted and sleeping really hard.

Likely, we'll have a bit more structure to our days once we get critters since we'll have to go out to give them (non-frozen) water and food, gather any eggs before they freeze solid, milk the goats/sheep, and generally make sure everyone is happy, warm and healthy. We're only planning to overwinter our laying/breeding flock, and don't expect them to produce in the winter... with marginal daylight and the cold, best to give them a break and let them put the majority of their resources into staying warm & alive.

P.S.  And what the %^$* is with the freakin' weather?!?!?  It's been majorly windy and warm (around zero), definitely not normal for late November. At least the snow isn't that deep yet, since it's blowing around at high velocity like a sandblaster and all sorts of stuff on the decks keep getting blown off so we have to hunt for it. Not just light/small stuff either!