The Zen Of Winter On Little Utah Farm

Winter on Little Utah Farm photo by Deborah Moen

WHOOSH!

 It was the second week of December. As the door opens a blast of vaporous swirls came licking into the kitchen. Paul, my husband, was leaving for work. the temperature was -20 degree temperatures. He hunched his shoulders ducking his head deeper into his jacket then reached back to close the door.

There was a moment of silence that followed. His truck lights hit the front windows then disappeared. I could hear the crunching of ice fade as he rounded the corner and drove towards the main road.

I remembered back when we were first dating. I used to watch his tail lights going down the road when he left. That memory always uplifts me.



My thoughts turned to baking cookies. It was baking day ! Paul and my grandson love my homemade chocolate chip cookies and the oven would keep the kitchen nice and warm. I began getting out the flour and the brown sugar, the 3 Pyrex measuring cups, the wooden spoons and mixing bowls. I turned on the oven.

Soon I would be going out into the freezing winter temps and onto the icy paths to feed the llamas and the hens. How they handle these conditions was not for me to know. I laid awake at nights before falling asleep feeling guilty for my nice warm bed. But I got to thinking, Nature has that figured out. For all I know they enjoy it rather than the heat of summer.


We have built the llamas a 3 sided shelter and provided heaters in the water trough and infrared heating lamps for the ducks and hens in the coop. The llama corral is filled with gravel and sand to keep it dry.

I made Arapaho's winter blanket.

In our first year here, Arapaho, our Suri coat llama, (shown above) shivered in the cold. His fiber was thinner than the others and hung down in loose twisted ropes or twine like Rasta braids. Shivering warms a body they tell me but I ended up making him a blanket anyway.

I also made Little Luna a coat for winter. 

The llamas have adjusted to the weather. Not a one of them shivers.. Even Luna Llena (pronouned yena) our surprise Harvest Moon baby ( 1 year and 5 months of age) does fine in the cold. Her first winter we made her a coat also.

In my day dreams I imagine an adjoining barn where I could peek through the kitchen window and see the llamas all lazing about inside earthing ( soaking up the goodness of the earth) on the dirt floor or munching in a big standing bin of premium hay. My hens are roosting on tops of the stalls or pecking though fresh straw for some scratch I laid the night before like the tooth fairy.


B-E-E-P ! The oven was preheated at 375 degrees. It was time to mix the brown and white sugar, crack the eggs and put in the vanilla. I love mushing that all that together. I take down the flour add some baking soda and salt. Mixing in those dry ingredients is not as easy and then comes the chocolate chips. The heavy wooden spoon does the job real good. I scrape it all into a container and snap down the lid for chilling in the fridge while I go out to feed the llamas and hens.


I put the mixing bowl into the sink and turn on the hot water to soak. I promised to only lick the zucchini bread batter and leave all the others alone, well, maybe sometimes I lick the brownie batter bowl also. It is fun for me and tastes so good.



On goes my shirt, my sweater, my coat, my shoes, my scarf  to cover my face. Thank goodness for gloves, the warm insulated kind. Once I am out the door and begin walking towards the shed, I am acclimated. I keep a swift gate and a happy face and smile at my loved ones who live outdoors. They really seem well and good in this cold. I feel satisfied watching them eat. Early in winter, after the first snows, I shovel a snowy labyrinth ( linking paths) in the pasture. I shovel and scrape open connecting feed stations and lay the hay in each one. It is still thrilling for me to open the gate and see them run through the white glistening snow along all the connecting paths and find their hay.

I figured out the best thing to say as I leave the freezing cold and go back into my warm home is... I live in the country, my dream has come true.



I realize, winter is a time to chill out, I mean, to slow down, relax, get more rest, organize recipes and photographs, bake cookies and breads, watch some funny movies, write more stories and letters, meditate and hibernate, like the roots of the grasses and trees.


 Winter may seem like a never ending cycle but really it is the perfect length of time. Winter is just long enough to miss and appreciate the green grass and the balmy breezes and the sounds of crickets in the night.


Thank you for visiting Little Utah Farm ( 18,516 page views)

Deborah Moen
of Little Utah Farm

Read my story about my gloves : A Farmgirl's Gloves

Here is our Vintage Tractor Collection which comes on mugs, pillows, cards, magnets, throw blankets, and more.We have Farmall, John Deere, Allis Chalmers, Ferguson, Ford Vintage Tractors.

Vintage Tractor Collection from Little Utah Farm Store

A Farm Girl's Gloves

My box of gloves. 

A farm girl's gloves are her best friend throughout the year.


There is a glove for every chore and activity. I didn't realize how much I use gloves until I misplaced the box clearly marked "GLOVES" . I have been making do by borrowing from my husband and buying new pairs now and then. This morning while cleaning the hallway closet, I found the box on a shelf at knee height. What a joy to be reunited with my box of gloves !

Meet my gloves :

My Cold Winter Gloves

I own a rugged pair of gloves built for a cowhand with rough leather lined with softness to protect your fingers and hands in the freezing cold. When I look down at my hands on a corral gate I feel like a rancher or cowgirl from the old west. These were my first winter gloves in Utah. They are great for wiping away snow from the backs of llamas and hay stacks. Unlocking gates and dialing a phone can be near impossible so I take a glove off to unlock the latches and put the glove back on.

Thse gloves are good for watering
 or any wet chores.

These warm sweater knit type gloves with the rubberized palms and finger tips keep your fingertips dry and they are great when watering your herd and flock. There is nothing that is good about getting your gloved fingers wet on a cold, single digit morning.

Use gloves with Thinsulate reflects the
 heat right back
 into your hands and fingers.

Thinsulate is best for keeping your hands from freezing. It reflects the heat back into your fingers. Once my hands were painfilled with bitter cold, not even the barn heater gave me comfort. My fingers were numb. But put a pair of working gloves with thinsulate and the hands warm up very quickly. I do have a a slight size issue with these as the fingertips are an 1" longer than my own.

Driving and Parade Gloves

I have a sort of fancy work glove that is a creamy sort of leather for driving the tractor and the four-wheel buggy, we call it. They have a bit of smudged dirt on the underparts from running my hands on the wheel. I do have a clean pair that are good gloves for the parades.

One of my favorite pair of gloves
with the purple trim.

My mid-weight gloves are flexible and serve to warm my hands when weather first turns cold. These also make good weeding gloves. I have 4 of these. Some with splits on the inside of my fingers from grasping tumbleweed or mallow stems and worn spots on the finger tips from pulling the earth this way and that to plant. Here are two of the pairs below.

Hail to the all-purpose glove for gardening, weeding,
feeding, and most any chore.

This mid to lightweight glove also serves as protection from the sharp dry alfalfa stems, baling string, and the equipment when we take the bales off the trailer and onto it's place on the pallets. These are good for feeding hay to the llamas.



I do love my gloves. When I do not wear them my hands are rough as unpolished wood and I cannot feel any soft or silken surfaces without feeling my skin pick at the fabric like a hundred cactus needles.  

I am so glad I found my box of gloves. All is well in my world.

Deborah Moen
Little Utah Farm

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Until next time,

“Finn fell asleep draped in Kittens and dreamed that the corn walked the earth on skinny white roots, liked to joke with the crows, and wasn't afraid of anything.” 
― Laura Ruby, Bone Gap

Vinatge Child Feeding Hen and Chicks Kitchen Towel
by LittleUtahFarm

Cold Weather Arrives at Little Utah Farm

So far we have gotten some heavy and fast hail
which turned most places white in 8 minutes.

The cold has come to Little Utah Farm.   The temps range from 30s to 12 degrees. Taking care of the animals is much different in cold temperatures.



The girls (hens and ducks) are hungry in the morning and I find having it all ready to put down in the morning works best for all of us.  In the evening after I put the ducks and hens to bed, I prepare their morning feast of scratch, feed, and sunflower seeds and a few dried mealworms and put in the feed bin with a tight lid. I fill the  water buckets and put them inside by the back door for next morning, so they do not freeze. I feed again in the afternoon around 2:30pm well before the sun goes down and the colder temps set in.


Those dried meal worms are eaten up fast. They miss their moths, and other bugs that they hunt  in warmer weather.

The chickens  and ducks are snug
in their coop during the winter.

The infrared lamps in the coop were dusted off tightened into position and connected. That gets turned on at 15 degrees. Some chicken owners say wait till below zero but I draw the line at 15 F. Some of you might even gasp at that temperature but the  girls run really hot. If you bury your finger into their feathers you can feel the heat they give off. Those feathers are like a super down coat. They fluff their feathers out to insulate the cold from coming in. The hens and ducks have a big coop. They roost in a small compartment which blocks the icy winds and rain and snow. Chickens do adapt to cold weather just like the swallows, robins, and doves who winter here.



Just a note: I raised my first hens in Southern California. I did not know much about them. When it got 60 degrees I turned the lamps on for them. Which is crazy wrong. But we learn as we go along. When I got to Utah I turned the lamps on at 40. then the following year, 30, then later, 20. Now it is 15. I see that the more adapt I am to the cold the more I realize the hens are too. I also came to this by reading many articles on the subject.



 The heating element was placed inside the water trough for the llamas. Llamas have a common dung pile and 90% of the corral stays very clean. In the cold, rain and snow those lines  get out of the normal parameters and the llamas manure pile extends out to the north east of the corral. Come summer the manure pile shrinks back to the southeast.

The whole herd of llamas fits ncely
inside a 3 sided shelter during a snow storm

 Llamas have a 3 sided shelter to keep out of the elements when they need to. the shelter is big enough to house 6 llamas comfortably.



The way we deal with the water and hoses is much different in the below freezing temperatures. After using the water, I have to drain the hose, disconnect it from the spigot, and put a special cover to keep the water from freezing.




As for me I have outfitted myself with nice thermal under layers. 3-4 layers of clothing keeps me warm in single digits and below freezing. These are not heavy layers at all. I can move about quite freely. It is the gloves I feel clumsy with. So hard to manipulate tiny jobs with those heavy gloves. An ungloved hand can get real cold, numb and painful so I keep those gloves on.

A nice big red barn.

I would love a nice big red barn that is connected to the house by an underground pass. I have that picture in my mind always and it makes me happy. I love to dream.
After all, dreaming got me here to Little Utah Farm.

Frost gathered on the alfalfa
and the drying corn stalks.

I take advantage of the mild waves of remaining warmth during the day to finish cutting the cornstalks and making a corn shock from my field of dried cornstalks. I am also layering cardboard, manure, kitchen scraps and leaves for good garden soil and no weeds. It did wonders for the clay soil.

Layers of cardboard, manure,
kitchen scraps, straw, and leaves.

Here is my blog post Winter Layers For My Garden which shows how to layer cardboard, manure, leaves and straw to keep the weeds down and also make rich soil.

That is it for now...

Deborah Moen
Little Utah Farm

Thank you for visiting us at Little Utah Farm


Until next time,

Enjoy your life, gather your blessings, and cherish each day.