9 January 2018 – Sunny and 55°
Oh yeah, that’s right, the thermometer says 55! It is a warm, soupy, muddy mess out there but we are loving the warmer temperatures. The forecast, however, is not quite so warm and friendly. It looks like snow again tomorrow and back to the big ZERO degrees by Friday. It is early January here in the Dakotas, so it is more than expected. Still, we are loving the warmth today.
We aren’t the only ones. The cows have found some grassy spots between the melting patches of snow and are preceding to eat all day. I guess their New Year’s Resolutions didn’t take either.
I was super excited to see some actual living bees yesterday! It has been quite some time since I saw any of the girls flying around. I have noticed piles of dead bees in the snow, but from all I read this is to be expected in deep winter. Bees are pretty hygienic and they don’t like dead bodies in their house, so when it warms up they toss them out. The bee corpses are easily spotted in the snow, and for a novice like myself, it is quite disconcerting. So again, I was actually jumping for joy when I saw quite a few live bees hanging outside the hive yesterday! I really hope they make it through the winter.
In other news, we added two more heifers and two bred cows to our herd.

Nothing really changes for them; we are still working in conjunction with Cowboy Dave and Linda over at the High Lonesome Ranch, and the herd will stay together. But we are excited to see what we can make happen over the next few years with our ranch. The big project this year will be barn-building and corral building so eventually we can have our own facilities for cattle.
I am finishing this post on the 10th of January in the early afternoon. Tractor Dave and I swapped out the bucket on the tractor for the snow plow to be ready for the next round of winter. We hold some sort of superstitious belief that if we have the tractor set up to plow snow, we probably won’t need it.
We have both retreated inside because it is starting to snow.


January 11, 2018 at 12:14 PM
Brrrrrrrr!!! Too cold for me! Sounds like you guys have a handle on it, but don`t send any this way, please.
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January 11, 2018 at 1:27 PM
Joel,
It sounds like you already had your fair share of cold weather…. but we’ll keep some on hold for ya just in case you change your mind!
Sent from my iPhone
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