Winter, 2011

(Picture from here.)

A few people (okay, one. Jan, my friend in Kansas City.) have asked me how we're doing up here in the Northern Hinterlands this winter. Do we really have seventy feet of snow? Is our front door the window in the attic? Have we started frying our neighbors and eating them in desperation.

(I'd never fry a neighbor. They shrink up too much. A nice long barbecue is what's needed.)

Well, we're fine and this winter has been rougher than recent years. We've had a string of mild winters that broke this time.

These images should all be clickable.



We do have a fair amount of snow on the ground as you can see here.





The gate here is a bit more than three feet at the peaks. So I'm guessing about three feet deep or maybe in the high end of two feet.






This is New England so we have icicles. The one in foreground is about three feet long. The back side has even bigger icicles. These are closer to five feet at the longest.




We have a greenhouse and chickens and we have to get to the wood pile. So we cut trails through the snow. The one one the left comes off the driveway to get to the bird feeder. The trail on the right splits. One goes to the gate. The other one goes to the chickens. The yellow snow isn't what you think. It's what drips off the icicles.

You have to manage to make your own fun in the winter. All of us have our methods from gibbering frantically at Glen Beck to playing Frank Zappa while watching C-Span.


Ben has been having fun with snow caves. They are easily more than five feet deep.

So we're all fine up here. If the roof caves in we can always live in Ben's snow caves.