An interesting combination at the best of times. Especially when one launches forth in the early, dripping morning. Clown pants on, Gumboots, big, long, old Dryza Bone Riding Coat and gloves, swinging my bucket, maybe even humming, after all it was warm rain even that early in the morning. Ton raced ahead as he does and suddenly whipped out of control across the drive, – feet flying out from under him, doing the splits, the twist and the shuffle and some canine breakdancing. His eyes as he spun past us were closed. This was not happening, he was thinking.
Boo and I stopped launching forth. We went very still. As still as I think I would go if someone suddenly told me that the drive was mined with bombs. I stopped the swinging of the bucket and looked more closely at the drive I was about to cross. The rain was bouncing off and pooling over a sheet of ice. Boo and I sighed, assumed the crouching position and commenced the ice shuffle. For the ice shuffle you pitch your body forward slightly, adding weight to the balls of your feet and then slide, slide, slide across the ice and out of danger. Rain on my head, ice under my boots. Aninteresting combination indeed. 
Later of course the ice had melted and the cows were locked off the grass. Everything is sodden.
Today the rain is said to be turning to snow as the temperature drops.
And in a few days we will be as low as -10F (-23C) .. but only for a few days then it will slowly climb back to just below freezing for a while. So this rain is going to be the hard packed ice that will sit on the ground for a while yet. I will need to get my sprigs out.
And the pigs will not be doing this –
Everyone will stay put. When it is cold the animals find somewhere out of the wind and go very still.
Sheila is still insisting on sleeping in the big pen. At night all these doors are closed, and her bed is deep and she has Poppy for warmth this year but why she has left her special draft free area and made her bed out here I do not know. But ah well. I am pleased that Sheila has Poppy and Tima has Tane. A pig sleeping alone gets cold.
I gave Sheila some new leaves of straw to plug into her bed. The cold is coming.
This is the story I was looking for yesterday about making laundry soap from old scraps of soap. Charlotte taught me something about my own site yesterday. If you want to look something up – scroll right down past the Lounge of Comments and into the Black. You will see a completely empty little white box on the left. It has no title or clue to its usefulness at all. Enter your search words in there push Enter and the little blog mice will run all through The Kitchens Garden blog looking for the relevant post. Thank you Charlotte. That make my life so much easier.
I hope you all have a lovely day,
Your friend on the farm
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
38 responses to “Rain on Ice”
Crampons to the ready! I was glad to find that little white box – the search tool had disappeared from my blog except when editing. I shall now go and look at mine.
Thank you.
Take care, love, ViV
Hope you and your critters stay warm. Some days ya just gotta find a cozy spot & snuggle up!
It’s possible to change where the search box appears in the Widgets section of WordPress. Going through the ‘WP Admin’ option when you hover over ‘thekitchensgarden’ at the top left of the page is the easiest way to do this. Click on ‘WP Admin’ and then hover over ‘Appearance’ from the black left hand side menu that comes up. Click on the option for ‘Widgets’. From there you can see the Search widget and move it to the Main Sidebar or another part of the page. So you could have it at the top or side if you wanted. You can also add a title, so you could call it Search or indeed anything else you want, then it will be an unlabelled box no longer!
Well I didn’t laugh one bit when I read TonTon …with his eyes closed yet….lost it. Maybe I’m part Border collie.
There is a word for this, I learned: lycanthropy. Did I learn it from this blog?
Your land is still green! GREEN! I haven’t seen green in weeks. We are brown and white here. Not very pretty.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com/?s=The+Adventures+of+Fuzzy+and+Boomer&submit=Search
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
Loved the piggy sequence down the steps. Oh so careful! I thought the grate was perhaps like a cattle grate…to keep piggies and other critters off the porch! But then again … You can’t fool piggies! 🐷
Yes…Bee careful Cinders!!
Snow turned into rain here in Germany. It’s nasty with a cold wind. I loved the full moon behind the bare trees in the dim light. It rained at my mom’s funeral but during the ceremony the sun came out for just a few minutes and warmed my heart and soul.
And now the snow has arrived. I am taking a lesson from the animals, and staying still ad I can.
Oh how I dislike the ice… but we got lucky down here last week as it missed us and went more to the north. I don’t know how you do it Celi. I never liked the bitter cold of Nebraska and left it 25 years ago next month. It still gets cold in Oklahoma but nothing like your part of the country. You’re a tough gal.
Oh Celi .. Thankfully the weather in NZ is gorgeous … Quick 🙂
Love those photos of the piggies delicately picking their way down the steps!
Beautiful animal portraits …..good luck with the big freeze…I can’t imagine it for which lack of imagination I’m truly grateful…..bon courage:)….and Happy New Year
I immediately thought of you, and Tima, and Tane, when I saw that Dain, the Dwarf King of the Iron Mountains, rode to Thorin Oakenshield’s rescue in “The Hobbit” on a Kunekune. A War Kunekune, mind you, but I’m sure it was an ancestor of Tima and Tane’s. Now I can only imagine them in battle armor!
This photo (of the pigs on the top step) is TOO CUTE!!