back2basics2013: Week #47, #48 & #49: Compost, Chopping, and early Christmas presents

Welcome to the second last blog post. As we approach winter there continues to be less and less content as you have seen in previous posts. Not much has been happening around here lately and we are actually starting to get lazy with the decrease in daylight upon us. We were so accustomed to staying outside until 9pm with activities in the garden, or hanging out with the chickens. Now. in the month of December, the sun sets just before 5:00pm, so that gives us an hour to be outside to do anything at all. Sadly to say when we now come home from work, usually eat supper, then just watch TV or (in Aaron's case) play computer games, and later go to bed......We sometimes find ourselves getting antsy as we feel like we should be doing SOMETHING constructive. Maybe we should have some winter projects to do in the house so we won't go crazy this winter.

We had another dead aspen tree fall with high winds during the last few weeks, so we collected and chopped up the wood. With this tree alone the wood stacked equalled the amount we used for our fire pit this year! Yeah!

Action shot of Aaron splitting wood from the aspen that fell along our fence line. Photo by Marianne Balkwill

Our new taller chicken run seems to be doing the trick. Although Marianne did see a chicken just barely clear the fence, for the most part they are staying in the run itself. With the occasional freezing cold temperatures we have already had their water freeze solid, so we got them a heated chicken waterer. So far our chickens don't seem to mind the cold temperatures and when it is below freezing they still enjoy romping around in the yard. Let's see how much they like it when the yard is covered in snow.

Another yearly task that we have been putting off is turning the compost, so we finally got that done and it now looks taller than before we turned it. This compost will be turned into the garden plots hopefully next fall, however we think we are going to have to make another composter for 2014 as this one is completely full!

Aaron turning the compost. Photo by Marianne Balkwill

Santa Claus it seems arrived a little bit early this year. We got some antique garden tools to use next season. One is definitely a plow, another appears to be a cultivator, while the other two we aren't 100% sure what they are right now........Any ideas?