Hi Y’all; Lori here from McDowell County in Wild Wonderful West Virginia.

Mother Nature has about knocked me the rest of the way off of my rocker. Of course those of you that read my prior posts already know it wouldn’t be a far fall. This is four-seasons country, but running through them all in two or three weeks is insane.

We were all so comfortable with our calm and mild start to winter; we had a green Christmas, and had a nice fire in the back yard on New Years Eve. We were getting kind of cocky with the ongoing mildness of January. We had actually started some seeds in the greenhouse that came from Wintersown.org that were ready to be started. The garlic, parsley and babysbreath started growing and we were getting exited waiting for the other things to sprout. OH, what happy fools we were. IT’S ALL DEAD NOW!

February shows up and everything goes insane; a little snow here and there, a little rain, no biggie, we are in the process of getting seeds and supplies for this years growing season. Rolling right along lining up our participants planning what goes where, when all of a sudden temperatures drop to bone chilling degrees. Then it warms up a little before  a huge snow storm left us house bound for 2 weeks, then here comes the rain and melt. Flooding is next on the agenda. Mother Nature doesn’t care that we can barely get to the center to make sure the goats, chickens and dogs are cared for. Now she has us in the 50’s and 60’s, and some rain. I hope she gets her self under control soon, I want to get all that yummy stuff in the ground.

Some ridiculous things happened during all this. We’ve had no heat in the center for months because both heat pumps went down. We did have a propane wall heater for emergencies, we used it in the beginning until the propane ran out. The place that originally put the tanks in no longer service our area; anyway, I was standing in front of it one day that was particularly chilly and talking to a lady that had come in to look at clothes. There we were just gabbing away while I was warming myself. She finally found all she needed and left, we had to leave after that for a meeting. As I was preparing for that, I smelled something strange, I went into the bathroom and noticed that the dang heater singed off part of my pony tail.

During our house boundedness; we have all been fighting with one form of the plague or other with out actually getting really sick. I have sinus issues all the time anyway so when I’m ill my nose doesn’t work at all. In this time of severe sinus occlusion I ended up drinking coffee made with diluted kerosene. I drank half the cup before I realized my mouth tasted oily. How does this happen you ask? We don’t drink city water here because it is nasty. When our friends went to get spring water for us, one of the jugs they had in the truck had once been used for kerosene and I was the lucky recipient of that particular jug. Thankfully I was the only one that drank it, but my coffee pot didn’t survive.

A few of our chickens started laying already, and the eggs froze before we got them. Since the weather has warmed up these past few days, we did manage to get two and a half dozen unfrozen eggs.

Good Stuff: Our one goat should be kidding anytime now, I can’t wait for that. Since our property is no longer snow and ice covered we were able to do so cleaning and garden prep yesterday. Will any luck it will stay mild and we can get our plants started in the greenhouse, and get some seeds in the ground. Since we have more space this year we are looking forward to and praying for an awesome season.

Until next time folks; stay warm, dry, and happy growing.