I kept track of ice cracking this winter, and you know, it was thirty days of cracking ice on all the water tubs. I love this climate. Just enough winter to kill the bugs and give me a winter wri-bernating break, and then spring. I will mention though, this is the first spring I've ever cracked ice, and I've done it twice since the 20th of March.
I've mentioned before I couldn't do this homesteading deal without a relationship with YHWH. For one thing, without my relationship with Him, I'd still be needing a town job, and without Him, I wouldn't have valued the redemptive opportunity back to the garden. I don't have a TV, there simply isn't time to watch one, and I get my news from the computer news sites, so it's not as if I'm uninformed, but I have a bit of hesitance when it comes to checking the weather forecasts. It just seems to me to lean toward wrongly placed faith. I'm not saying that for everyone, but I felt compelled to work around the weather prognostication.
It's gotten to where I think a lot of our weather is planned and choreographed anyway, so although everyone claims much better accuracy, I've enjoyed learning to watch for signs indicating the weather. I look at weather reports kind of like cause and effect. How difficult can it be? So as our weather patterns are tampered with, I'd rather have a truly reliable report. Some day someone may turn off the "SMART switch" and I won't have internet and then what?
YHWH told me when I first began this homesteading venture to watch the animals to learn about the impending weather. The squirrels get more active before it rains, I'm guessing they are filling up their stashes. The coyotes really howl and prowl like crazy, because they know their prey will be tucked in for the rain or snow. They know they will experience a couple of lean days . . .
Now as for the homestead critters, they put on quite a show before the weather changes. The chickens literally all take dust baths and fight more than usual, I mean they demonstrate a pecking order. Guineas act like the sky is falling. They squawk and squawk and squawk and just pace the fence line. The horses kick up their heels and gallop with their tails raised and feathery. My little burro is just hilarious. She manages somehow to have all four feet off the ground at the same time and when she lands, she's snorting and braying and running crazy little circles.
My goats are particularly unique little meteorologists. The young does are the most serene. They eat, continuously rather than eating, then chewing their cud for awhile. I didn't realize this until I began homesteading, but goats, unlike cattle or equine, will not graze in the rain. One drop of rain and the goats run for cover, so when moisture is on it's way, they fill up. I guess they figure they can chew their cud in the barn while it rains. The young kids are like a circus act. They leap for all new heights and become exceedingly animated, and they are a pretty lively bunch as it is. Who needs TV when I can look out my kitchen window and see three little tiny bucklings acting all territorial on the wrought iron table in the woods?
Stella, my oldest milk goat lets me know, 36 hours in advance that rain or snow is coming. I've been milking her for years and she knows the routine, but a day and a half before the rain is due, she's agitated and lets me know it. I can't do anything to suit her in the milk parlor. She slings her feed, stomps her left hind foot and turns her neck so her head literally faces behind her and just stares at me impatiently until I finish milking. Without fail, the precipitation will be falling within the next day and half.
So, I don't worry about technology keeping me apprised of the weather and I don't bother G-d asking what is impending, He has provided me with some amazing weather forecasters.
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