November - 1 week after the blizzard.

The day that I came home from my call at the hospital, the sun was shining and the temperature had warmed above freezing. The great Blizzard of snow was melting, the frozened water thawing and birds were flying from branch to branch with chirping and chatter as if to say that it wasn't really all that bad.
While I was walking our collie that day, I happened to view a pair of bluebirds. They stunned me, because they are so rare to see but there they were. Their colors are unmistakable. The bluebird blue is the color of a perfect blue sky. It's belly is the warm brown of the earth. To see such a site was a gift admist the fallen branches and trunks of apples that I knew I had to remove before the end of the day. An earlier post documents my efforts to remove the apple tree that turned out to be the most productive tree of any. It grieved me so deeply.
 Later that week, I saw a gorgeous Ring Neck Pheasant  on my way out from our home. It was stately and confident. I didn't know we had such a resident on our property. He took offense that I didn't know that he was here. I didn't have my camera for these beautiful birds. 

Last Sunday we were buried in over 1 ft of snow. This Sunday morning I could capture the frost on the Lemon Thyme and Wild Strawberries.

Most of the snow has melted. There are still leaves on the apple trees. There are still leaves on some of the oaks. It will be warm again. Unseasonably warm. The wild Turkeys love it. They have a favorite place to explore for food here. They walk out from the forest and venture over our property to the closest apples.  They don't mind the stumps and brush. For them the brush provides cover with good morsels to scratch and find.

The weekend is also the time that Kent can saw and split wood. All of our wood for the wood stove comes from the fallen trees from our recent storms.

Even with all this machinery, the amount of labor effort to provide enough wood to heat our house is hard to believe. It takes a huge amount of time and work. The wood that we provide only supplements our needs but the difference is measurable. We have been able to cut our oil consumption in almost half. This alone is motivating. However, we wouldn't have invested in the equipment to take our own trees if it weren't for the storms.  We have enough on our 5 acres to supply us for a very long time.