A drive to La Crosse to deliver CSA shares yielded some pretty spectacular scenery today.

I could have driven on I90 to La Crosse but I always prefer to take the back way along scenic highway 14 which yields much more interesting scenery, even if not perhaps the fastest route to the city. 

What you can't see in this photo:  The snow all up and down my backside, a result of sliding down into a ditch between the road and the pasture to get this shot. The horses only sniggered a little.

The wind up on the ridge was pretty ferocious.  I was thankful that I had my warm vehicle and did not have to make the trek in a horse-drawn carriage, like many of our Amish neighbors do, no matter how cold it is outside. 

After my stops in La Crosse, I stopped at Grandad Bluff for a few more photos. 

Breathtaking, in more than one way!

Cheers - 

Cheers -

My Icelandic ewes love sunflower seed and alfalfa pellets.  

They love them so much {snow much?} they will go rooting around in the snow to find them. 

When winter drags on and on, sometimes it's the little amusing things like this that make the winter tolerable. 

Berrit photo poo bomb

Cheers - 

When you live on a farm with an endless supply of "to do" lists, even in the winter you have to take every possible advantage of breaks in the weather to tackle those jobs.

One of the jobs on our list was to finish renovating the turkey townhouse, which still had some major gaps in the roof and walls which left me worried about both raccoons and cold weather.

The cold weather broke around Christmas so the weekend following found us up on the turkey roof ripping off rotten shingles and the sheeting boards underneath them and replacing them with new plywood and plastic corrugated roofing.

Papa even left some gaps in the sheeting underneath so that the clear plastic corrugated panels would make a skylight up the middle of the roof, brightening the interior of the shelter.

Additional renovations included enlarging the pop-hole door to "turkey-size"...

which came in quite handy a few days later when I went inside the shelter to check their feed and the top outer door latch flipped shut on the outside, locking me inside.

Forcing me to use the escape hatch, i.e. turkey-sized pop-hole door.

See the lighter colored pieces of wood on the window frames?  Papa built those to hold the greenhouse panels in the windows.  They flip out of the way so during the warmer months we can easily remove the greenhouse windows and allow fresh air to blow into the shelter.

Papa is so clever, isn't he?

{Don't tell anyone, but he saw that was how the original windows were held in place and borrowed the idea...}

We even found a bullet lodged in one of the ceiling struts.

If these walls could talk!

Of course we had help, or rather, company, in the form of Gypsy and Karma.

Somehow Karma figured out how to get into the turkey paddock without getting shocked by the fence.

Which troubles me a bit, to be honest.  I don't need any small predators breaching the fence, like anything in the mink family.

But she poses no threat to our livestock, not even the little rabbits in the barn, which she visits often, under my supervision.

It seems she is just incredibly curious and has to be in the "thick of things" at all times.

"Curiosity killed the cat... but satisfaction brought (her) back."

That is her motto.

Which is true - she's been delivered to death's door at least once in her short life, and lived to tell the tale.

Despite all of these distractions, Papa kept his focus on the task at hand, working until past sunset and into the dark to finish the roof.

That Papa, I tell ya, he's something.  I am so grateful for his handy-man skills.

So now, let the snows fall and the winds blow and let varmints try to breach our fences.

I know my turkeys are safe, sound, and at least semi-warm.

Cheers -

"What do you want for your birthday?" I asked Papa over and over in the months leading up to his turn-of-the-decade celebration.

Finally I got an answer - "I want to sit somewhere quiet and read a book."

Arrangements were made for our daughter and a friend to come to the farm for a visit and they graciously agreed to do morning farm chores so that we could stay each night at a local B&B.

I didn't even have to think twice about where I wanted to stay.

It was a warm summer day the day I walked into the laundromat in a small town down the road (our town is so small it does not even have a laundromat!).

To my great surprise the door was opened even before I arrived with my arms full of laundry.  A pleasant grandmotherly woman greeted me warmly and ushered me inside.

After loading my machines, I sat down near her.  She seemed eager to talk.

For the next 45 minutes she told me about her life growing up on a farm, about all the chickens she raised and the eggs she sold, about her wonderful daughter who runs the B&B just out of town, Amil's Inn B&B.

I knew of the inn, I had driven past it on countless occasions on my trips back and forth to the Big Farm during the summer of 2011.

I had admired it's many, large gardens and ached to sit on the front porch with the quilts hanging over the rails.

She told me I would soon meet her daughter who was coming to pick her and their laundry up, and not too long after I was introduced to the innkeeper, Anita.

It was like meeting an old friend I had known forever.

Anita immediately invited me over to take a tour of the inn, and I jumped at the chance.

The inn was delightful, the rooms decorated in a country-style I wished I had the talents to emulate.

We parted as new friends and promised to keep in touch.

Since that time we have had tea parties at my farm under the pear tree, laughing as the young chickens raced back and forth from the rose bush to us to beg for treats.

I have toured their gorgeous gardens, eaten their scrumptious veggies and sat on their front porch with the quilts.

We have celebrated my birthday and New Year's Eve together.  I have put my folks up for a stay here.

And now we would celebrate Papa's birthday.

We were put in the room, In The Beginning. a lovely room with windows facing south and west, with lots of natural light, my favorite!

Despite our familiarity with the innkeepers, we were still given the grand welcome tour and were settled in in no time.

It was truly one of the most relaxed we have felt in a very long time, as keeping up with the pace of things on a farm is typically anything but relaxing.

For two nights we slept like babies on Comphy Sheets, the most luxurious sheets I have ever had the pleasure of sleeping on, and dined like kings at breakfast (all homemade, often with local ingredients!).

After a leisurely breakfast, we would meander home (only 10 minutes away) and find all the morning chores done, with plenty of time to hang out with our daughter and friend.

On one of the days we picked up the kids and went over to O'Gara's Christmas Tree Farm and picked out our Christmas tree, then spent the afternoon and evening trimming it.

The entire weekend was just lovely, all of it.

So I will say, if you ever find yourself needing lodging between La Crosse and Madison and are looking for a restful night's stay, wonderful food, and great company, I recommend you stop for a night (or three) at Amil's Inn B&B.

You'll be happy you did.  Tell Anita that Gypsy Farmgirl sent you!

Cheers -

It's been 6 years since we've had a Christmas tree in the house.

Why, are we Grinches or something?  Don't celebrate Christmas?

Well, no on both counts.

It's been more of a logistical issue.  We often travel for the holidays, and I don't like the thought of a live tree dying in the house while we're gone.  Fire hazard and all that.

And the cats.  Lots of cats to climb up or tear down the tree.

So we've just avoided it altogether.

But this year I wanted a tree.  And I wanted a tree that we got to choose and cut.

So when C-baby and her friend visited the weekend after Thanksgiving, I thought, "This is my chance!"

Friends recommended a local tree farm that was just over the ridge from us, and soon we were piled in the XUV and on our way.

After picking up the requisite equipment - namely a tarp for dragging the tree and a bow saw for cutting, we began our trek up the hill.

The trees were planted in sections by type.

We passed by all the short-needled spruce varieties.  We always had short-needled spruces when I was growing up.

They make lovely trees with lots of space for ornaments, but I wanted something different, something bushier, something a little longer-needled.

And then we spotted her down the aisle of Scotch Pines.

She was perfect.  Symmetrical in shape, full and bushy.  C-baby and I agreed immediately, we had to have her.

But Papa Bear wanted to keep looking.  We hadn't reached the top of the hill yet.

We debated leaving someone beside her just to keep the other shoppers away until we returned (as we knew we would).

But in the end we trudged up to the top of the hill only to find more short-needled pines.

An attempt was made to use the tarp to slide back down the hill, albeit unsuccessfully.

When we returned to the Scotch Pine row, she was still there.

{Whew!}

And so the cutting began.

There were gadgets at this tree farm that I have never seen before, like this one, which shakes the tree vigorously to dislodge snow and loose needles and such.

And this one, which reminded me of something the Grinch might use to stuff and steal Christmas trees from the Who village.

As Papa tethered the tree to the truck, we wandered around looking at things.

And breathing deeply.

Need a hand, Papa?

Even the drive home was lovely, with white snow and red barns peeking out here and there.

Stay tuned for trimming the tree!

Holiday Cheers -