Bernd, the trick to getting a snow blower to go through very high snow is to- First slug through and get one pathway through the snow. Once this initial path is in take swaths only 1/4 the width of the snow blower. This way the auger on the blower can handle the amount of snow going in and will eat right through very deep snow. When you try to gobble through a whole width (in my case 24 inches) it is too much and you end up trying to plow the snow rather than feeding it into the auger and discharging it. I had over 2 feet and by taking about 6 inch 'cuts' off the edge it ate right through the snow and sent it flying. The first pass is rough and requires a lot of back and forth to get it through. You also need a 2 stage blower, single stages cannot handle any heavy loads. Electric snow blowers are only good for very, very light snows (useless, in my opinion). I had to rescue my next door neighbors who have an electric blower; trying to be 'green' It could not touch the heavy snow we had and they were having a horrible time trying to shovel out......like a good neighbor, I was there to bail them out with my carbon dioxide breathing, snow eating machine. Jon

Holy Mackeral! I feel like we're living in a snow globe here, 80kms north of Toronto. McPeg: I agree! We are paying BIG for the tropical Dec we had last year. To quote Nancy Kerigan, "WHY, WHY???" We have 2 indoor cats who attempt to escape to the great outdoors every time the door opens. So, this am we opened the door to put up a wreath (the front step is knee deep) and the two of them went running out the door like mad hatters. They came to a screeching halt as soon as their precious paws hit the snow. LOL! You shoulda seen the look on their faces. They looked like they finally got the golden canary then it quickly changed to a look of "Wha the bloody h---??" Okay, we're bored and have nothing better to do than torture our kitties. Note: No cats were harmed during the making of this post. Just a little dose of of what the outdoors is like in Dec. Should keep them from trying from trying a Kitty Run for a while. :~) BJ who should be baking or wrapping gifts or something productive.

Jennifer, You can move the chick to the brooder if you prefer (I like to do it because rat snakes and chicken snakes cannot get into the brooder to eat the chicks), but our hens do not slaughter their babies. So, we aren't moving them into the brooder to protect them from their moms. Sometimes, if there is only one chick hatched, we do move the mother into the brooder with it so the chick won't be lonely. Usually we have more than 1 hatch out at a time though. Sometimes a chick has a congenital issue and just doesn't survive though. It happens with a certain percentage of the chicks that hatch. If you try to think of your chickens as farm animals, not pets, not substitute children.....just farm animals, then it will be a whole lot easier (I hope) to not obsess over them. This is why we don't name our poultry, although Chris did name his two turkey toms although Augustus is the only one whose name I could remember, and the other tom didn't care. He'd come to you even if you yelled 'Hey you". I always keep in mind that our poultry are farm animals, not pets. Otherwise,the inevitable losses of free-range chickens to hawks, coyotes and bobcats would be too much to bear if I started thinking of them as more than farm animals. I think you are normal. Some people just get really attached to their animals. I am that way with furry animals, but not so much with feathered or finned ones. Rebecca, It sounds like your garden is doing really well. Mine is just roasting in the heat and lack of rain, but it is producing, so I cannot ask more of it than it already is managing to do in these circumstances. I do not think I got more fruit set in our slightly cooler conditions but I won't be certain for a few more days. Or, at least I won't stop hoping for a few more days. Of course, the rain has missed us all week and I don't really expect tonight to be any different. In years when the rain starts missing us like this, it tends to do it really consistently. I did some deadheading of zinnias a few days ago, but need to do more. I just try to leave the flowers as long as possible for the bees and butterflies before I deadhead. I probably need to cut some for bouquets just to lighten the load on the plants. They're almost too heavy in their compost-rich bed and are turning into big overgrown monsters. Jacob, Haying is going on hot and heavy here too. Tis the season, I guess. Everyone was trying to get it cut, raked, baled and, in some cases, hauled, before the rain could get here. Well, no problem at all since the rain hasn't made it here yet. There was a ton of haying going on all week, and even more today. Even fields that normally aren't cut are being cut and baled. I think people are starting to worry about drought developing and perhaps them needing more hay than usual put up for winter. We've been there with coon issues before. They are mean. You have to be really carefully carrying the trap because they'll do everything in their power to hurt you. I hate them. We leave the possums alone (of course, they are fenced out of the garden) because, among other things, they eat venomous snakes. I'd like to have 100 possums living on our property. Instead we just see one or two wander through occasionally. I am sorry the critters took so much of your garden. Been there, done that, and have the 8' tall garden fence now to ensure it doesn't happen ever again. Tim moaned and groaned and whined about putting up a tall fence (the expense! the work!) but, you know what, it was worth every bit of time, expense and labor to keep the garden safe. It even was worth listening to him moaning and groaning about it all. For all that he does not like putting up fencing, even he knew it was our best option and that we just needed to do it. He just didn't want to do it even though he eventually gave in. I think mostly that, after fencing our 14.4 acres to keep the neighbors' cows out (and we had to cut through 40 years of overgrown forest in most cases just to be able to put up the property fence), he just hoped he'd never have to put up another fence for the rest of his life. Fat chance of that. We couldn't do any fencing right now, though, because the ground is rock hard like cement and there's no post hole digger that can break through it when it is like this. Nancy, Happy Birthday! Hope you're having fun today. Of course we got the wind (clocked in at 52 mph at our mesonet station) last night and none of the rain. Then, today we got the higher dewpoint and a heat index of 104, again without the benefit of the rain. I wouldn't mind the other stuff that comes with the rain if only we were getting the rain too. The good thing about not getting rain is that we're not getting hail, so at least there's that. Every day this week I tried to harvest all the tomatoes at or beyond the breaker stage, the zucchinis, the yellow squash and the peppers. I'm just trying really hard to not get behind on harvesting. I thought that the first PEPH peas wouldn't be ready until the middle of next week, but now it looks like they will be ready tomorrow or Monday. They are turning from green to purple pretty quickly in this heat. The second planting of southern peas is just now sprouting in the former potato bed, with a row of an heirloom red zinnia mix in between the two rows of peas. Hopefully the new planting will be producing by the time the first planting is finishing up. I've been sowing dill, fennel, zinnia and cosmos seeds in every bare inch of ground within the garden fence, trying to ensure the pollinators and particularly the butterflies will have everything they need for the rest of the season. As the fields dry out, I've noticed there's not much left blooming for them. At least within the irrigated garden I can try to provide them with blooms (and their pollen and nectar) all summer long, unless it gets so dry that I totally stop watering, and I hope it doesn't come to that. Our rainfall for June is worse than pitiful. I don't have a word that adequately describes it, but it is, so far, less than 25% of our average June rainfall has fallen and that's not many June days left to make up that deficit. Our 4" soil moisture level was 0.06 this morning. Well, at least it cannot get much worse because it already is about to the bottom of the scale. I hope that anyone in the path of tonight's storms get nice gentle rain and none of the wind, hail or damage from severe thunderstorms. Dawn

Rajin- in a wheelchair you would qualify to me as leaving for medical necessity. As one with no medical needs I have been through multiple hurricanes and I lived less than twenty miles from the mandatory evacuation zones and was inconvenienced but fine. In all the hurricanes I've been through there were no deaths outside of the immediate coast. Here's the problem - there is never enough road capacity for those under mandatory evacuation & medical needs to evacuate; those alone cause major backups on the roads. When you add in additional people then it becomes physically impossible for those in the mandatory area to get on the road. They are the ones that are assumed to be in the most risk but when the roads have greater than 48 hours of backup how can they leave?