I guess it’s part of my personality to go through a hard time without saying much, and only after, when there is some relief, when the pressure is off, to look back and realize - okay, that was hard! Sheesh, that kind of sucked!

I know we’ve got more than a month of potential winter weather to go, but here, it feels like we’ve turned the corner. The daylight has returned, the harshness of the weather has broken. The hens are increasing their egg production, and I have the first pots of seeds started on the windowsill next to the woodstove. This morning, I scrutinized them and discovered seedlings! Tiny leeks are just poking out of their seeds, barely there, but THERE!

We didn’t post much in December and January.

(the point of this picture is that there has been nothing to photograph, except snow...)

In December, two cars (for all practical purposes) bit the dust, and we scrambled in winter weather to find a replacement we could afford, scraping funds together on short notice. The snowploughs took out the mailbox, and there’s been no way to get another post into the ground through the snow and solid freeze. In January, in the coldest of the cold, a waterpipe and the kitchen septic froze. We learned the hard way exactly where in the crawlspace the washing machine drain connects to the septic system, after flooding the kitchen heartily for the second time when we tried to do laundry. The rest of the month was a dance of orchestrating heat in the house, balancing the need to conserve with the need to keep pipes unfrozen; a ballet of opening and closing doors, cutting, loading, stacking firewood, and debating ways to load the woodstove for longest and most efficient burning, covering windows in the dark and opening them to the sun. It’s been a hard winter for so many people…. we’ve heard of barns collapsing under the snow; folks with high hopes for hoophouse greenhouses lost them to the snow and cold. We are thankful January has passed.

So, we’re mighty glad to feel the change in the weather! Seed starting time and maple sap gathering are right around the corner!