Posts Tagged ‘winter preparations’
Making Preparations
Our health insurance provider has notified us that they will no longer offer coverage in our location in 2026. Each time I have spoken with a new provider about their plans, they have mentioned being flooded with calls from people in our county in the same situation as us.
I found a plan that appeared to fit with my needs, but it didn’t show my primary care clinic in its list of providers. Several calls led me to the option of using my regular doctor and having my clinic send the bill to the company whose plan I intend to select. All parties appeared to be in agreement.
When I tried enrolling online at Medicare dot gov, I got stuck because it didn’t have my doctor in the list of choices. When I tried enrolling at the site of the company I had chosen, it tried to direct me back to the Medicare enrollment site. I called them and explained my predicament. Their solution was to snail mail me the application to fill out and return.
It’s a good thing I’m not shopping for major coverage. All I’m looking for is the basic annual preventative checkups. I can’t imagine how crazy it must be to find complex coverage.
With phone calls done and paperwork in the mail (supposedly), I headed outside to get a little exercise with Asher. Next thing you know, I’m busy raking leaves off the front yard.
The wind was blowing in my favor; otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered. Most of the trees, other than the oaks, have dropped the majority of their leaves. Just maybe that’s the last of the lawn raking for the season.
At this point, the next thing to do would be to locate where I stashed all the snow shovels from last year. You never know, maybe it will snow this winter. I like making preparations. It’s a little like preventive medicine. Or insurance, even, only with much easier enrollment.
.
.
Misjudged Amount
I thought it was going to be a small amount of slushy snow coating the grass but I guessed wrong. Our first snow of the season covered everything with around three inches of windblown snow.
As ready as we thought we were for winter to arrive, this snow landed on plenty of things I intended to move. Cyndie’s door table in the woods. The furniture on the deck. Potted plants all around the house. Chairs out in the yard.
It’s all stuff that can still be moved without too much trouble. Temperatures are expected to warm up well above freezing in the next few days, but there’s no guarantee how much of the snow will disappear. I’m gonna make another guess and combine it with some hope that almost all of it will vanish.
By the weekend, it looks like a chance of some rain, which would go a long way to finish off any patches of snow that might last that long.
Cyndie landed the first appointment for surgery today, so we are heading out the door before dawn and hoping to have her back home in the recliner by mid-afternoon. Just depends on how quickly she comes to her senses, breathes on her own, and eats a little something.
We are well familiar with the routine.
While she convalesces the next few days, Asher and I can be outside putting away deck furniture. I’m sure he’d love to help me.
When we first met Asher, his foster mom told us he loves snow, so we’ve been looking forward to witnessing it firsthand. His reaction didn’t disappoint. His aura radiated “FUN!” the whole time he was romping around in the white stuff.
Thank you to all who have offered encouraging messages to Cyndie for her metal removal today. We appreciate your support! I’ll provide a full report tomorrow about how smoothly everything went.
.
.
Freeze Prep
I put these chores off for longer than usual this year, but the time finally came last night to blow out the underground water line down to the labyrinth garden and remove the pond pump and filter. We also brought garden hoses into the shop in preparation for this morning’s freezing temperatures.
When it warms up tomorrow or Saturday, we’ll lay those hoses out on the driveway incline to assure they drain and then we can coil them up for winter storage.
I almost forgot about the waterer in the paddock, but Cyndie thought to mention it. We hadn’t been checking since the horses left and rainwater had collected because we didn’t think to pull the stopper out of the drain. The water had gotten a little green.
Thankfully, Cyndie remembered to dump the rain gauge down by the labyrinth so water won’t freeze in there and crack it. We learned about that the hard way. This happens to be plastic rain gauge number two down there.
It feels good to finally have these little chores addressed.
I’ve been a little neglectful of other things around here during the long days of focus on the deck. With the late first freeze, I’ve been able to get away with it until now. The average first freeze for the Twin Cities is October 11.
While working on the waterer in the paddock, my hands got incredibly cold, giving me a vivid dose of the discomfort which awaits in the coming days. That classic biting sting of freezing fingers.
Time to dig out our gloves and mittens.
Brrrr.
.
.
Nice Try
The weather at home has eased enough to melt the snow in all the areas except shaded spots, but it hasn’t released its grip on the frozen ground. I had a spare ten minutes last Friday while Cyndie was finishing preparations for our visit to Anneliese and George’s house, so I grabbed a rake and tried moving some leaves off the grass on the front yard.
In the time I had, pretty much all I accomplished was clearing a small area of the yard and piling the leaves around two trees. That left a lot of oak leaves still frozen in the grass.
Earlier Friday morning, I also tried raking out piles of composted manure that I had dumped on the hay-field while Cyndie was in Guatemala. I hadn’t gotten a chance to do that before because it rained, then froze, and then snowed on those piles.
On Friday, it was almost warm enough to make me think raking out the piles would be possible. Almost. I worked on it anyway, because it felt like any little progress was better than no progress at all.
I’m counting on the universe giving me points for at least trying, on both the leaves and compost tasks.
.
.
Odd Behavior
After setting out a pan of feed for each horse after work yesterday, I walked down to close the gate to the hayfield, passing by the raised circle I had covered with lime screenings just over two weeks before. It’s a little surprising to me that the horses had, for the most part, stayed off the new covering. There were just a couple of light hoof prints from one horse where it had tested a small portion that had been tamped down by my feet.
The majority of the circle had been left to cure naturally in the rain and sun, because I didn’t have the time to press the rest of the area out, one little boot print at a time. Suddenly, I felt moved to spontaneously pick up where I had left off.
While they munched on their feed under the overhang, I meticulously began a ridiculous dance of baby steps across the circle. Occasionally, I would resort to hopping up and down in order to put increased pressure on spots that seemed to need it.
Always curious about every project we get involved in, the three chickens quickly arrived to investigate the scene. The flat lime screenings didn’t appear to harbor any crawling creatures, so they busied themselves with the dirt around the perimeter.
A few blinks later, I gained an audience of horses, apparently just as curious with my mysterious project. Luckily, they also maintained a cautious step away from interfering with my gyrations. At about ten times my weight, they would easily cause more disruption than compaction to the relatively new surface.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
If they can stay off of it until the freshly pressed screenings have another chance to bake in the sun for a few days, there is a chance it will support them without getting all pockmarked. Actually, what would be really nice is, if they would lay down and roll around on it.
That’s not too far-fetched a possibility. I’m guessing it will look like an attractive option, once they are convinced it’s safe to walk on.
Eventually, the horses and chickens left me to my odd behavior. I hopped and baby-stepped until the entire circle had been compressed by what little force I could generate from my small frame.
A little victory in the grand scheme of things deserving attention.
Add to that, getting the windows re-installed on the chicken coop, and taking down the tarp that covered the gazebo, and we are starting to round the final turn in the slow race of preparation for winter.
For those keeping score, we are expecting some snow will be mixed in with rain that is due to visit us tomorrow and the next day.
Now that I think of it, I guess that circle won’t really be getting baked hard as cement any time soon.
.
.
Doggin’ It
Racing home to beat the sunset, I arrived in time to drive the Grizzly into the woods with my chainsaw to clear a fallen tree from the trail. Actually, to clear half a tree, as it had fallen from our neighbor’s side of the fence. The top half of it was protruding into the path of our trail.
It wasn’t large, so I made quick work of it and returned to the garage where I changed to the winter wheels on the Griz and mounted the snowplow to get it ready for the next wave of precipitation moving our way.
Then all the off-season tires for both the ATV and Cyndie’s car were stowed away on the high corner shelf, and the garage got rearranged to make room to store all the equipment we probably won’t be needing for the next few months.
By the time I got in from chores, Delilah was overdue for attention and let us know it with an endearing parade of dog toys she pulled out and presented for our review. After chasing her around the house for her rubber yellow monkey, she got distracted by her antler chew.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I laid down next to her and listened to the sound of her teeth clanking and grinding against the hardness of the branched horn. I was down on her level and we were just chillin’ together.
With all of the things I accomplished after work on a Monday, I deserved to spend a little time dogging it.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Heavy Handed
I haven’t quite mastered the art of using the loader on our tractor yet, but I’m gaining confidence. What that means is, I am able to make more mistakes quicker.
More than once yesterday I was heavy-handed on the lever and scooped too deep beneath the pile of lime screenings. We worked to spread most of the pile before the weather makes a season-long shift to frozen ground.
It’s the kind of thing that drives this perfectionist to major frustration.
One way I get over it is to move on to the next time-sensitive task that needs to happen. Cyndie and I removed the canvas from the gazebo before the first accumulating snow falls.
From up close, I discovered the gory details related to the subtle lean the structure has taken on that has been visible for a few months.
My first inclination was that the soft wet ground had given in on one side, but now I don’t think that was the case.
It’s possible the horses pushed against one side. It’s also possible that an extreme wind gust applied enough torque to bend the frame. Thinking about it, the second scenario would seem to make more sense, because if it was the horses, I believe they would have pushed it even further. Or they would have pushed it again after the fact and compounded the damage.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
With daylight fading, I left the bent frame to be dealt with next spring and switched my attention to moving the deck furniture to our winter storage location on the back side of the house. It was the last thing I wanted to accomplish for the day.
Just as soon as I shed my outdoor gear to settle inside for the evening, Cyndie realized she needed her winter tires for a car appointment today. We store them on a shelf in the shop garage that gets accessed two times a year, so plenty of stuff ends up getting piled in the way.
Back outside I went. On the bright side, I was going to need to get the tires down anyway. I need to swap to winter wheels on the Grizzly and they are stored on that same shelf. Best of all, no additional problems turned up with my last two tasks so, no new added frustrations.
It feels good to have enough done that the impending snowfall brings with it no extra dread. The essentials have now all been handled.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 