2023: So Far, So Good

Wind damage from the two major windstorms in 2022.

Above average temperatures in January have had us feeling like summer should be coming any day now.

Shoveling another roof off.

Even though December brought us the single biggest snowfall in the past 30 years, January ended up being pleasantly mild.  It even warmed up to above freezing in the last week! The melting snow and warm temperatures has got us pretty excited to start working on our summer projects, the list of which seems to be growing by the day. From here, it looks like we’ve already got enough projects to fill the entire summer; let’s hope nothing else comes up!

We’ve been using these slower winter months to plan out as much as we can for the summer, since the warm summer months are so precious as far as getting things done, we like not having to take the time to make plans and decisions. It’s much nicer to already have made all the decisions and laid all the plans and all we have to do is work, work, work and check things off the list. One of the major items we’ve been planning is our summer livestock and farm/garden crops. Taking all the knowledge and experience we gained last year and applying it to the upcoming one; making sure not to repeat the same mistakes and expanding on the things that worked well. Some of the many projects include building one or two more greenhouses and fixing the existing ones, moving the pig pen to a new area of the yard, getting more chickens (both egg layers and meat birds), and fixing the fences.  

One major milestone we reached this month was getting the in-floor heat system turned on in the shop we built this fall. Pete got all the plumbing put together, pressure tested the system, and filled it with a glycol mixture then flipped it on. It took about two days for the slab to come up to temperature; going from near 0°F to 60°F where we have the thermostat set. The new, warm, brightly lit space is sooooo nice! Though it’s not quite ready to move all the tools in just yet, since we want to get all the messy drywall and painting work out of the way now so we don’t have to do it later and work around all the tools and equipment.

Pete explaining how the in-floor heating system works.

A little help here, please?

Inside of the shop coming together.

Another thing we did to take advantage of the warm weather was clean out the wood stove. We need to let the fire go out all the way to do that, so we usually don’t do it until March. We like to take the chimney pipe completely out so we can clean it outside and keep some of the mess out. We also shoveled out all the ashes which, after burning wood non-stop since late October, start to take up a lot of space in there. Like many things around here, we’ve gotten pretty good at this project and we were able to get the whole job done in less than a couple hours.  

Carving out some ski & moose trails.

Reassembling stove pipe after cleaning.

Bear has a snow beard! LOL

Well that's about all for this month. Thanks for reading, everyone!