"January Thaw" Weekend

According to the "Farmer's Almanac", the January Thaw is more than just another piece of fanciful weather lore, because annual averages really do show a slight temperature increase, and subsequent dip in  January.  During the January Thaw, which usually lasts for about a week, temperatures rise an average of 10° F higher than the previous week, then drop back down.   Usually this happens around the third week of the month, but I am certain that the "2013 January Thaw" is happening this weekend. Temperatures were near 60° F on Saturday.

We worked outside much of the day, taking down most of the holiday decorations (I left some of the lights on the fences yet, as they brighten the winter nights, no matter which month it is).  We cleaned up our woodpile and got more firewood, and we finally picked up all the branches that came down during the couple of days of high wind warnings around New Year.  It made our brush pile even larger.

Farmshow Week!

We enjoy visiting the PA Farm Show every year, and today was the day for 2013.  The food court remains Lars's favorite spot, and we stopped there for lunch and dinner.  New this year (at least we had not seen it before) were pumpkin funnel cakes with cream cheese icing - they were delicious. Of course we visited all the animal exhibits, watched some of the goat judging, saw funny looking chickens and watched ladies spinning alpaca yarn.  Spent time in the large arena watching tractor square dance and walked down every isle of the PA Preferred food vendors.  We saw the winning quilts, jams, apples and more - and the largest gingerbread house we'd ever seen.

Experimenting with Labels

I picked up a package of oval "print-to-the-edge" labels that Avery makes. I have to say, they worked great with the templates available from their website.  Much, much better than the ones I tried last year.  I chose a matte, textured finish 2" x 3 1/3" sized white label and had a lot of fun trying out different designs.  Actually I spent way too much time "playing" with design options, without realizing how much time had passed.  A great option for hobby winemakers :)
We used these labels for our last two carboys from 2010 (!)... the wine still tastes great, we just never got around to bottling it until the holiday break.  We had 6 gallons of a mixed apple and 5 gallons of a light concord wine.

Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy New Year

filled with peace and joy! 

 

We are looking forward to a "fruitful" year, with additional plots of grapes, fruit trees and elderberry patches and possibly our first real harvest of blackberries and grapes.  While we are pouring over seed catalogs and dreaming of Spring, we are also enjoying peaceful winter scenes around our farm.

 

 

Fancy Fingerless Gloves

Seems that I get the sudden urge to knit every year around Christmas time - it becomes an obsession, and there is nothing like the approaching deadline of holiday gift-giving to finish projects.  This year, I became fascinated by fingerless gloves.  They don't take too long to complete and it is fun to experiment with more intricate lacy designs.  Most of the patterns I used came out of  the "One Skein Wonders" book, though I also found patterns in some of my older knitting magazines.  Here are some of the gloves I finished in Decembers:

Easy Firestarters for the Woodstove

We've tried lots of different ways to start fires, from soaking dried pine cones in hot wax to using a blow torch...but the best way we found to get our wood stove fire going is to make simple fire starters out of old candles and paper towels.  We burn a lot of candles, especially during the holidays, and we always save the left-over wax.  Come winter time, we melt the wax in a pot on our stove, using a low setting for the burner.  When all the wax is melted, we use single sheets of paper towels, which we twist to form sort of a rope, and quickly dip these into the melted wax.  We then lay them out to dry on freezer paper (or aluminum foil).  Once they are dried, we store them in a bucket or bag until we need them.  We still use a blow torch to get a fire going, but the wax soaked paper keeps the flames going for a long time, enough to get the kindling pieces burning.

It's Snowing!

What a beautiful sight -  right at Christmas time too - snow falling softly, blanketing our farm in white.

Herbs in the snow

Leif's first sledride

 



Snow Barn



Snowy Chambourcin



Snowy Neill Family
 

Snow-covered tree by pond