Changes...

A lot has changed for Mike and me in the past few months.

First and most importantly, our lovely daughter Jen married her true love Graydon on May 28, and has moved to California for the foreseeable future.

Five years ago, we were certain that Inman Road would be home pretty much forever...but we have moved!  On the second to last day of April, I dragged Mike to see the cutest little log house ever, just 10 minutes away...and on the last day of May, it became ours.  We spent a couple of weeks gradually moving our stuff (of which we have a ton), and on June 17 we became permanent residents in our new home.

So the Inman Road Chronicles will be no more...but I hope you will join me at my new blog Under A Cariboo Sky 

Thank you for sharing a small part of our lives on Inman Road.

Karen xo

Spring...sort of.

I can report that the last of the snow has finally gone, as of yesterday. Finally.  It was a long, long, winter and thus far a cold, damp spring.  All is well...the garlic is up and about 4 inches tall.  My fall spinach planting experiment worked well, and the spinach is doing its thing too.  No leaves out just yet.  The ice came off of Horse Lake late last week, 36 days later than last year!  The birds are coming back in droves, and although I haven't seen a hummingbird yet, a feederful of high octane syrup is hanging in anticipation.

Critters are all alive and well, except that we lost one chicken a couple of months ago; the others kept attacking her.  I brought her into the house and kept her in Rudy's crate to heal, but the others wouldn't accept her back, and I'm not quite "country" enough to exist with a chicken living indoors over the winter. (It actually wasn't so bad, except she kept kicking woodshavings through the wire door and the dogs tracked it everywhere) I'm not quite "country" enough to put a chicken down either, so a friend had to take care of the dreadful deed.

Under Siege

 La Nina has given us our snowiest winter since we moved here five years ago.  There is about two feet of snow on the ground, and winter is showing no sign of letting up just yet.

For the most part, mornings here on Inman Road are quite routine.

In the mornings, I put the kettle on, let the dogs out, and feed the cat.  I make tea, let the dogs back in and give them breakfast.  I enjoy a big mug of tea, chat on the phone with Mike if he is away on the road, and then pull on a warm jacket, step into my boots, fill a jug with water, and head out to the chicken house.

The chickens are always happy to see me, and gather around my feet to peck the snow off my boots.  Their water gets replenished, I feed them, and I collect the eggs. (The chickens have heat lamps to keep them from getting too chilly in the cold weather, and a light on a timer that comes on at 3:30 a.m.  They need the artificial light to stimulate them to lay...with the light coming on that early, eggs are usually ready to pick up when I go out to feed them.)   Once the eggs are collected, I take them back to the house, and then go back outside to feed Buck and Rupert.

Equine breakfast consists of hay, and hay comes from the hay shed.  Buck gets three or four large flakes of hay, and Rupert gets about 1/3 of a flake.  On Wednesday morning, there was hay strewn around in the hayshed.  A bale had been torn open, and there was lots of loose hay on the ground.  A moose had found the hay. (This has been more or less inevitable, but we have managed to avoid being raided until now.)  I fed the boys, and pondered how best to deal with pillaging moose.

Being resourceful, and not wishing to share my $8 per bale hay with the local wildlife, I decided to block the open end of the hayshed with the tractor.  And so on Wednesday afternoon, I carefully positioned our trusty Kubota crosswise so even I couldn't easily get in. Problem solved.  No access to hayshed for moose, and therefore no further hay loss.

That was the plan, anyway.

Yesterday morning, Thursday, I went through my usual routine...kettle, dogs out, feed cat, make tea, dogs in, dog breakfast drink tea, talk with absent husband, wait till it was light enough to go outside to feed chickens...as I was about to head out I spotted these two:

 Not just one, but two moose...a big cow and her calf.

 They loitered,

 Checked the birdhouses for occupants

And eventually wandered away...  

I did the chicken chores, then went to feed the boys.  One of the two moose had gained access to the hayshed by going through the tractor, breaking the steering wheel, smashing the glass of the instrument panel, bending the front end loader control and doing other damage.  The tractor is unusable now until it can be repaired.  

The moose were back last night, and this morning were loitering in Rupert's pen after helping themselves to another free meal.  Rupert is not happy about having company.  And neither am I.  I'm not sure how we're going to deal with these now not-so-welcome guests.

A Thanksgiving Offering

We had some chores to do in the chicken house today; Mike installed a heatlamp to keep the girls cozy in the coming cold weather, and we hung their feeder from the ceiling and raised their water container higher from the ground in an effort to keep shavings out of it. We had shooed them all outside while we worked. I was doing a routine clean, and found these dear little eggs in their nest boxes...haven't checked for a few days, and wasn't expecting any eggs quite yet, as they're not even four months old yet. The first eggs are about half the size that the girls will eventually lay. A lovely surprise for Thanksgiving!

Chicken Watching...Everybody's Doing It

The chickens are an endless source of fascination around here.

Cody and Jasper can't get enough of chicken watching.

Lucy is equally enthralled.

Buck and Rupert, on the other hand, are much more interested in hay than chickens.

Fall in Lone Butte

Second Annual Note to Self

Because I can never remember what I planted where the previous year: Garlic is planted as follows in alphabetical order:  Rows 1&2 Bogatyr, Rows 3&4 Georgian Fire, Rows 5&6 Polish Hardneck and the rest are Yugoslavian.  Each year I'm planting fewer varieties. The first couple of years I went a bit crazy with planting zillions of varieties, but in all honesty they all taste pretty much the same to us.  Some are a bit milder than others, but I don't think I have it in me to be a garlic gourmand.

All done.  I planted the garlic after work today;  it is an especially lovely afternoon, mild and breezy, and the apsens are at their stunning golden best everywhere.  Yesterday I dug and weeded all the raised beds, except for the herb and flower one, which is too full of stuff to tackle just yet.  Then I got out the tractor and scooped a couple of buckets of composted manure from last winter's pile (thanks, Buck and Rupert!) and added that to the raised beds.  They can sit now for the winter, and in the spring will just need a quick dig to loosen up the soil again.

Critter update coming soon, RinV!