Cider Bend-February

 February is a busy month on the farm with lots of visitors coming to do Valentine pictures with the animals. It's so fun!

Here is a reel of all my cute critters dressed up in their Valentine finery.

I wanted to have the pictures here on my blog as well, so here are a few of my favorites.

Dolly

Ginger

Roxie

Ace

Opal

Clover

Willow

Nobody can rock the tights quite like Willow!

Here is a reel of some of our guests that came to see the animals.

We had a couple weeks of some frigid temperatures in February.

All of our outside waters have heaters except for the cows. We can't run a cord to theirs. I spend a good portion of time checking waters and breaking up ice.

The young moose has been back. This isn't a good picture because he was at the very far end of the property, but we have seen his tracks go right through our backyard, and also between the back of the barn and the hay barn. I'm sure he is around a lot and we don't even realize it.

🥶🥶🥶

Mark put a hand washing station in the barn, and it has been so nice.

After all the snow and ice, we had a few really warm days in February, and the farm turned into a huge mess! So much mud and flooding!

The water between the corrals and chicken coop came above my ankles.

Cats:

Floof and Michem have been great. They really are the most spoiled kitties!

I wish I could sleep as good as her.

This is what happens when I try to scrapbook.

This is when I try to organize and clean my book cabinets.

😂😂😂

The two outside cats have been doing great too. Cheddar hangs out here a lot more these days.

Cheddar even visits the back porch sometimes.

Stormy usually sleeps on all the blankets in the hay barn, and Cheddar likes the little bed.
This is what it looks like to be a stray that found the perfect farm to call home.

Donkeys:

Clover and Willow are still my very favorite. I just love them!

I fill their outside water with a bucket every morning and evening. Each morning when I bring the full bucket into the stall, they both have to take a big drink as I'm passing. They have an automatic waterer right in the corner of the. stall, but apparently my bucket water is way better.

Each time I walk out to the barn and I'm spotted by Clover, I get the cutest greeting. I wish I would remember to film her more often because I want to put a whole montage together. She's the cutest!

I love their little twitchy lips when they are waiting for a snack. I also love how Willow shoves Clover out of the way. 😆

I wish I would have started filming this earlier. It was so cute watching Clover follow right behind Willow step for step. 💗

Grateful that Cold Stone supplies us with all the buckets the donkeys could ever want.

I put together a whole reel of the donkeys trying to ruin each other's blankets. 😂

Cows:

Opal is the sweetest little thing. She just wants to be friends with everyone and play. No one was giving her the time of day.

Ace wants you to boop his snoot!

Opal watches Ace play with the ball, but she is never quite sure how to do it herself. She finally went for it, and was so proud of herself. Now she is constantly jumping on it.

The cows, especially Ace, love to run with me in the pasture. We do a lot of laps together. Mark thinks I'm crazy, because it can be a bit intimidating to see 400 pound Ace bearing down on you. He's just like a big dog though, and just wants to play.

Here's what it looks like from my point of view. 😆

By the end of each day, I definitely smell like a cow. They like to lick my clothes, Ace tries to eat my hair, and of course I can't resist snuggles. It's a unique smell, and not in a good way. 😅

Here's a reel I made that describes Mark and I perfectly! We've had this conversations and others like it so many time. 😂

Cute little Opal is always a mess after she eats. Her whole head and face are usually green. She went out in the rain right after she ate, and pretty much dyed her face green.

Goats:

I let Tillie and Fern out to wander around the barn while I do chores in the morning. I started noticing that Ginger and Fern were making friends through the gate. It's so cute! They will just stand together for the longest time. I finally let Ginger out to see if she would be nice to them. Ginger is kind of a brat, so I was skeptical, but she was really sweet. She seems to genuinely like them.

Chickens:

Tillie and Fern are the sweetest chickens. Even Mark can't resist carrying them around sometimes. 😁

I love Thursdays when the chicken coop and chicken run get all clean.

Here's a fun chicken tip:

We got 4 of our 7 baby chicks at the end of February. They are so cute and tiny! the two yellow ones are light brahmas and will be quite big. They should turn white. The two dark ones are Americanas. They will be similar to the Easter Eggers we already have.

We decided to let Nora name the 7 new chicks. So far the little yellow ones are Sage and Banana, and the dark ones are Meatball and Her-Hei. 😂 I can't wait to hear what else she comes up with.

That's about it for February. We'll be spending the next month gearing up for all the spring and summer farm projects we'll be tackling this year.

It's A Girl!

 Mason and Bailey are expecting baby number two in July. They had their anatomy scan, and everything looked great with the baby. Nora was able to be at the scan with them, but they didn't want her to find out the gender until a little bit later, so the doctor let Bailey and Mason know the gender by using terms Nora wouldn't catch on to.

She is so excited to be a big sister!

The doctor printed out the row of photos, and then printed a separate one just for Nora.

That night they took Nora to Build a Bear and let her pick out an animal. She stuffed it and washed it, but when it was time to dress it, Mason took Nora out, and Bailey did the rest. When she opened the box with her animal in it, she found out the gender based on what it was wearing.

Nora's first time at Build a Bear.

She picked a cute piggy!

Giving the pig a bath.

There it is, all ready to reveal if the baby is a boy or girl.

Ahhhhhh, so exciting!

I love her, I love her pig, and I love her baby sister!

🐷🐷🐷

We're so excited to have another grand baby! Nora is going to be the cutest big sister! We can't wait!

February Adventures

 Soup in the Snow:

Soup in the Snow is always the first weekend in February, and it's always one of my favorite events of the winter. This year we had great weather, and the trail was narrow, but mostly in great shape. I ran up with Charles and Erin, and ran back down mostly with James. Overall, a great day with friends.

The Soup in the Snow start.

Palisades is the most beautiful winter trail. I do it so often, that sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live so close to this gem.

The Lower lake and turn around point.

Eating lunch and huddling around the fire with this fun clan.

Cress Creek Area:

Joyce came down to my neck of the woods to get some miles in the Cress Creek area. The actual Cress Creek loop was an icy mess. 

Oliver's Peak:

Joyce and I set out to snowshoe Oliver's Peak on a frigid day. The temperature was negative 4 when we started, but it was a big climb, so we never got cold. The climb was intense, and I was feeling very uneasy about avalanche conditions, so we made the call to turn around around 1/4 mile from the ridge line, and about 3/4 of a mile from the peak. That sounds super close, but with how steep it was, it still would have taken us a while. I just felt like we weren't in a super safe situation, and it's better to be safe than sorry. We'll go back to get the peak another time.

starting our day just on the other side of the Wyoming border.

She's my favorite snowshoe buddy!

It was a gorgeous climb!

We got pretty high, and then just kept climbing.

I love when the trees are frosted.

Getting out and doing stuff like this makes winter so much more bearable.

Wolf Flats:

I did 11 beautiful miles on Wolf Flats with Ashlee and Ashley on a dark Saturday morning. I love running in the dark in the winter time. This route is so pretty along the river in the winter, that it's always a treat once the sun comes up. We saw a beaver across the river running along the water. 

Starting in the dark.

There was a lot of snow! That makes for some hard running!

Ashlee running through the frosty trees.

So pretty!

Palisades:

Steph and I wanted an easy run up Palisades. The trail was great a couple weeks earlier for Soup in the Snow, so we thought it was a great choice. Hahaha, apparently it snowed a lot more the previous week than we realized. The snow was so deep, and no one else had been on the trail. It was kind of runnable for the first mile, and then it got so deep, and there were snow slides everywhere. It's been a long time since I've seen the trail like this. We were also following lots of cat tracks. It was slow going, and we turned around shy of the lower lake, because Steph's feet were freezing. We couldn't move fast enough to get them warmed up. It didn't help that she took a step, sunk really deep in the snow, and came up without her shoe. 😂 We were following moose tracks most of the way up, so were were on high alert. We must have run right by them, because on the way back down, we passed two of them lying down in the willows right off the trail. When we were almost back to the trailhead, we saw (and heard) some hounds tracking mountain lions. A guy showed us where the den was. A little too close for comfort considering all the tracks we saw. It was just the kind of adventure that Steph and I like. 😁

One slight step off the trail and this is what happens.

Even the runnable parts were well above our ankles.

So many cat tracks. It's a little unnerving when we're the first and only ones on the trail.

😅😅😅

I spy a moose in the willows.

We had to have run right by these gals on the way up the trail.

Women's Runs:

It's been so fun being back at the women's runs. I missed so many last year.

T-Rex:

Our first February women's run was a strava t-rex. It's so cute!

The next one was spelling the word LOVE for Valentine's week. We're on a roll with our Strava art. 😄

The third run was around a slushy greenbelt.

Not as many outside runs as usual, but I've been focusing on weights and cross training this winter, so I've been in our gym most morning. I've still been trying to get out a couple times a week though, so I don't go crazy.