Thursday 5 February 2009

Winter wonderland

On Monday morning we are watching the news and seeing how much snow everyone else is getting and feeling a bit sorry for ourselves as we had only had a slight dusting! We were sure that we wouldn't get anything, but as the day passed and the flurries became more persistent it started to look a bit more interesting. Mark had to go out in the afternoon and the moment he got back we had a big whiteout leaving just about an inch, doesn't sound much but it was better than a dusting.

Tuesday morning, we both woke up early (just like kids), it was my turn to get up and do chickens, cats and tea; 'Is it snowing?' he says, 'no' I say, looking out of the front window, I then looked out of the back window and changed my response pretty quickly, another white out which lasted for at least an hour. We got about another 3 or 4 inches from that one. Tuesday is rubbish collection day, so I trudged through the snow (the picture is taken from the end of the drive by the road) to the end of the drive to find that no-one had been down our lane that morning, so clean and pretty!

After a couple of hours I realised that we were going to run out of milk. I normally keep a bottle in the freezer but hadn't replaced the last one I had taken out. Although we have a 4x4 we didn't want to chance it as we have some quite steep hills round here and it would have been silly to have ended up in a hedge for a pint of milk. The nearest village is about 2 miles away, quite a nice walk on a sunny day, even including the hills, but it does have a nice pub too so we wrapped up warm and set off down the lane. It was absolutely majical, all the trees covered in snow and by then just one vehicle had left tracks in the lane. We got our supplies from the little shop and had a quick beer in the pub which was packed with people who had taken the day off and were about to go sledging. We would have joined in but had found an old sledge in one of our outbuildings and wanted to get back to have some fun with it on 'our' fields. It was a fun day.

The only 'things' that didn't appreciate the snow were the chickens, they normally are
yelling to be let out in the morning, but had got caught in the snow on Monday afternoon and had to be physically picked up and put into their house that night as they were definitely NOT going to walk on the snow. On Tuesday morning we had a chicken jam, the first one stepped onto the ladder and other 3 followed enthusiastically, number 1 chicken stopped dead in her tracks - white stuff (shock) oh no not going down the ladder onto that and then tried to back up the ladder with the other 3 pushing from behind. Very funny, wish we had a video camera. One did eventually venture out as can be seen on the picture, but the other 3 stayed firmly in the house. The cats weren't that sure about the snow to start with but once Charlie got the hang of it he had a great time chasing it and playing with it.


We still had snow on the ground yesterday morning but it thawed quickly (I was hoping for some more sledging). We were hopeful for some more today as the forecast at times said we would get more, but all we have today is murk and a cold Eastery wind. That is probably that for us this winter, apparenly they don't really get snow much here. It would be nice to get some more but at least we have had some and at least we have lots and lots and lots of photos to remember it by. (The picture is a view of Dartmoor from our garden taken with a small zoom lens).

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