I Thawed I Thaw a Thnow Thtorm

This kind of winter is rare enough for us. The eye delights, over and over again, even though the shepherd’s arm protests at the carrying of water and chopping of gate paths. Here is the Clackamas River with lace-works on its banks and in its air.

It brings to mind those 19th Century holiday greeting cards with glitter and snow in happy drifts.

Why do you suppose we so warm (I use the word advisedly) to images that evoke a past we each have not really known? We cherish those views of past winters and farms from calendars and books, put them on our holiday cards, and hang them on our walls to bring up that feeling of the season. We look for that picture of ourselves in a traditional landscape. But when we do, we are warm! Always warm bundled in wool, warm in this darkest of seasons, warm with hot cider in a cup.

Here’s a view of a neighbor’s barn. Doesn’t it just rejoice the cockles of your heart?

[Merriam-Webster:

• Main Entry: cockles of the heart
• Etymology: perhaps from ²cockle
• Date: 1671
• : the core of one's being —usually used in the phrase warm the cockles of the heart

• Main Entry: ²cockle
• Function: noun
• Etymology: Middle English cokille, from Middle French coquille shell, modification of Latin conchylia, plural of conchylium, from Greek konchylion, from konchē conchDate: 14th century 1: any of various chiefly marine bivalve mollusks (family Cardiidae) having a shell with convex radially ribbed valves; especially : a common edible European bivalve (Cerastoderma edule syn. Cardium edule)]

But with that snow-bound barn goes water that doesn’t flow, gates that don’t open, livestock that cannot find browse so need extra feed, and need shelter from the wind. It means making paths to the yards, busting latches loose, shoveling out the swing of the gate…

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Not that I’m complaining. We choose this place and this life. But in part that’s because it brings us next to reality, even some hard moments. We butchered a young ram last week, one that could not be properly sheltered from the storm. Rams are a problem on a small outfit. They are almost always destined to become dinners. You just really have to have special yards and lots of fences to have many rams on a place. They have a competitive attitude toward one another, and this one was small in stature and couldn’t be left with Eldon, the big ram. We had no good place to put the little guy, so we brought him up and butchered him. He’s hanging, in the old style, in the woodshed.

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Do you remember my comment when the temperature dropped here, that I thought we would lose the Kiwifruit crop? Here’s what happened:

When it got cold enough to freeze the water in the cells of the fruits, the cells swelled enough to push open the skins, making splits. The cells themselves burst, leaving a fruit that is mushy. They won’t continue to ripen. The wild birds and rabbits will take them as they fall, however. In fact, the birds won’t wait for them to fall but will come by and help themselves off the vines. Some plants tolerate more cold than others, but few fruits will be improved by a truly cold snap.

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Except, that is, in the matter of pleasing the eye.

Who owns these apples, left like holiday decorations on a frozen tree? Not me, you may be assured! We take our apples long before this!

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The thaw is upon us now. The magic is gone. What was white is muddy. What was lovely is broken and abused.

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There’ll be other winters, other snowfalls. But it’s been over 50 years since we had one like this here.

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Make your reservations now if you plan to be around for the next one!

Midwinter Wishes

Best Wishes to us all

for the holidays –

May 2009 be a year of hope, humanity

and peace.

© Susan Nielsen 2008

About the Christmas Tree

What do you do when you don’t have room for the Christmas Tree? You think horizontally.

This year, because of our temporary existence in close quarters, we decided against bringing a tree in to fight for space with us. We went with a nice holiday swag under the loft decking. Who says the gifts have to go under the tree? They can go above it. See them there, on the left, upstairs?

Or, I suppose, if you align yourself to the usual up-down  arrangement of a tree, they must be sideways to it.

Or something.

Ar’dic Blast

If I hear one more broadcast anchor or shivering reporter in the field say, “The Ar’dic Blast continues…” I may shriek. Honest.

But, boy howdy, it’s been cold.

Things would have been cheerier here in The Shambles but for a catastrophe of discomforts that came all at once.

We adjusted to the inside F64 degrees, OK. Not too hard. But then, the other night, the newly installed woodstove started belching smoke into the room each time a wind gust hurled itself against the building and down the pipe. This was uncomfortable to be sure, and the smoke alarm blared every time, before easing off to continued low-urgency bleats for 10 minutes. All night long. The stove was putting on only a feeble effort to warm us. We stirred the ashes and embers to help matters. Smoke issued in columns through the front of the stove. The alarm alarmed. In the middle of the dark night we shoveled out the ashes altogether and built a new fire, checked the room thermometer (F52), and settled again under the covers. We placed a space heater next to the bird cage. Poor Gyro the little Conure was fluffing his feathers and burying his beak in his breast. The wind hit the building. Smoke filled the room again. The alarm went off.

Then the power went out.

The smoke alarm has a back-up battery, so it faithfully kept reminding us of the problem. We moved Gyro closer to the stupid stove.

By 3 AM, it was 38 degrees inside. The windows were open to allow the smoke to make its way into the atmosphere. It was 18 degrees outside.

OK. That was quite enough, I thought.

In the morning I called a friend and begged foster care for Gyro.

I brought home a flue cleaning apparatus. Nothing would have gotten a stove installer out here in the middle of a December snow, so we thought we’d scrape out the chimney pipe. That would surely help things. We looked up and saw actual ice hanging from the top of the stack.

“Isn’t that supposed to be the hottest part of the chimney?” I asked. We assembled the handle sections (tight, mind you, with 2 pair of pliers), and pushed the brush up the flue, scrubbing out clinkers and soot.

And then we withdrew it, 4 handle sections…

…and no brush.

By then the smoke alarm was singing merrily because we had the bottom of the flue pipe open and indoors was a veritable smokehouse. Too bad we didn’t have a fresh ham on hand.

We stared at one another (maybe; it was dark) and said, “Let’s go sleep with Gyro.” Our dear, hospitable friends Barbara and Peter had already made up the guest room in anticipation of our arrival. Gyro was pleased to see us.

We slept like dead people. Dead people who smelled like a campfire.

When we arrived home again the next morning, the electricity was on again.

The water was off.

We won’t roll in the details any more. We’re here at home, the fire is burning, the water is running, and the lights are on.  The cold snap isn’t finished,

and we almost know we’ll lose power again, so Gyro is still visiting friends.

I’d better bring him home soon. I’m told he spent part of the afternoon petting Barbara’s cheek. It’s one of his best affectionate gestures.

How quickly they take up with someone else.

The Season Turns Seasonal

When we were small, our mother would very occasionally wake us on a winter morning with the words, “Look outside.” Oh, special! We wiped moisture off the window and our eyes fell on fresh winter snow.

It’s that day here.

Up in the hills where we live now we get more frequent snowfalls than we did in Town, but they still bring magic. I took a walk into the woods this afternoon. The first snow is unlike any other.

Here is where someone has been nibbling a mushroom. Deer? Rabbit?  They must have come before the snowfall, and left no tracks.

The henyard was a little startled.

These girls haven’t seen snow before. I wonder if, when they woke up to it, they invited each other to look outside?

It’s unusual for temperatures here to drop right into the F20s from the mid-40s. It’s done that today, and the forecast promises to deliver mercury in the mid-teens. The sheep have each other to warm them inside their shed, and the llamas seem to make their own decisions about whether to shelter in their barn or to linger in the woods, but I put up a warming light for the hens. They’re not ready to face this without some aid.

Now comes the matter of human comfort. We’ve learned to be easy with the interior at F65. That’s not so hard; you make the adjustment fairly quickly. But this is going to be a winter we remember, I think. Those of you who have been following along will remember that we’re camping out, more or less, because the house is under construction. The studio workshop, where we’re sheltering during this, is uninsulated. It’s not uninsulated by design, just on account of the construction schedule on the house. We had to make the shift, and this is where we are. So: our woodstove will put about a 30-degree rise on the temperature outside. F25 outside: F55 inside. Next week: F18 outside. I’m not sure I want to think about this. But we have lots of clothing, lots of blankets, and lots of good tea. And we like each other, so, let’s see, if we huddle to share body warmth… 98.6 +98.6 = 197.2. That’s pretty warm. And I’m bound to put on a hotflash now and then and offer more than my share of BTUs.

Chances are we’ll lose our Kiwifruit crop in this freeze. The fruits are nearing maturity just now — still a bit hard and sour for use, but so close I’ve been sampling regularly, expecting that day of readiness. When the ice comes out of the air after this snap, I’ll find them thawed from the freeze, too soft, not at all what we hope for.

Still and all, it’s awfully pretty out.