Well, I'd bought some new gadgets to better clean my guns, so one night I dragged them all out and spent a few blissful hours cleaning.
Apparently, this love of cleaning is hereditary. The next day, Dad toiled for a couple hours at cleaning all the golf balls he'd slogged through the mud to recover from a drained pond at the golf course.
A week prior to a visit from my Canadian cousins, I was gleefully pulling out recipes and trying new dish combinations.
I really wanted to serve this:
Not a beet, but an heirloom variety of all purple sweet potato. Unfortunately, my harvest of this variety was too small to spread around for a dinner party of ten.
This was the menu for the Saturday fiesta: deviled eggs (thanks to my hens), baked brie, mesclun salad, tourtiere (French Canadian meat pie), root vegetable gremolata, pecan smoked organic chicken and lamb, mesquite (from my Nevada trip) smoked venison burgers and apple pie (heirloom apples and butter crust). Can you tell that I can be as obsessive about food as I am about running?
I left my cousin, Rolly, at the helm of the smoker. He quickly figured out my contraption's quirks and watched over it until after dark until the meats were ready. Meanwhile, another guest, Karen, was abandoned in the kitchen to finish the cooking of other dishes. As the good hostess, I took off to have fun.
Two borrowed golf carts for farm touring.
Sophie, showing us her archery prowess.
Yes, it was cold, but we're Canadian.
The bitter cold didn't arrive until later...
Add the wind chill and you have record shattering temperatures for Alabama. It's nothing compared to Dakota weather, but nor are our pipes buried 6 feet deep, try 4 inches in some instances.
Preparations for the Alberta Clipper:
Insulating and letting drip exposed faucets in the barn.
Finally getting to test out the block heater for my dually.
Setting up heat lamps in the coop.
Blanketing the horses.
Even a blanket for Morel. Who loves you, baby?
This is USDA zone 8, the arctic blast dropped us into zone 6 for a few nights. No way was I going to lose any of my rare roses and broadleaf evergreens.
Breaking the ice in the billy goat's water trough.
An hour afterwards and it was iced over again. The only way to keep it free was to cart 20 gallons of hot water from my house to add to it a few times every day. Adapt and overcome.
Even the ponds were freezing over -- I've never seen that in Southern Alabama.
So, for days, I've been outside until late at night preparing my house and my clients' homes for the freeze. Am I tired of the cold? Not at all, I love it! The sting on your face of the cold wind reminds me of Canada, makes you feel alive. For someone like me, who relishes silence, you can't get a purer example of silence until you go out into a cold Winter day in Northern Quebec. I've never experienced that kind of silence in Alabama before. All animals are hunkered down for warmth. I couldn't hear a single bird. No animal is rustling through the woods. Nothing. Mark my word, someday, somehow, I'll be living up in Minnesota or Maine, wrapped up like a Michelin man with the silliest grin on my face!
