It's a New Year.
Yesterday, January 1, 2012 was a gorgeous, mild, clear day here in northeastern Connecticut, and my family and I spent it outside loading wood from cord pallets into the garage. Awesome, but no, it really was. After the recent bout of sicky-poo stomach bug that went all through the state over Christmas, a day of hard work in fresh air was needed. Our 3 year old son, Hunter worked splitting light pieces of kindling with his plasic wedge and maul while my husband, Patrick, and I alternately hauled wood and pulled out the last remnants of late brassica from the garden. Those Brussels sprouts really hung on and we ate our final harvest of them not even a week ago. I turned up a couple carrots too, but chucked them in the compost. I also managed to split a nice bit of kindling (with Hunter's help) for the wood stove. With temps predicted to go down to the single digits next week, we need all we can get.
All in all it was a nice afternoon to be outside enjoying the weather before it turns bitter here in the next few days. Our 6 hens have gone through their goofy molting and all of them have new clean feathers and their pride back. Those girls were ugly for a minute. We are getting about 1 egg per day, a far cry from the 5 plus we collected all summer, but you can't fight Mother Nature's cycles. I'm just happy they aren't looking like plucked birds ready for the pot now that the real cold is about to blow in.
