Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Winter Games

Wednesday was a very nice day to be outside and some of the things I was able to do on the farm got me to musing about some 'games' we can play during the Winter months.  And...lucky you... the farmer's musings as he does work get shared on the blog more often in Winter than they do in Summer!

Seed Catalog Bingo
It is the season of the seed catalog.  And, I suspect we may get more seed catalogs than most gardeners, so if we play it, we have to go for a blackout versus five in a row.  I've lost count of how many we have received now, but we just landed 2 or 3 more in today's mail.  In the end, we'll place orders with five, but we look at nearly every one of them at least a little bit in order to do the 'due diligence' of searching for certified organic seed.  Note - we have received each of the catalogs on this card, plus a few.

Here's your card - tell us how you do:
B:  Seed Savers - Potato Garden - Burpee  -  Fedco - Totally Tomatoes
I:   Select Seeds - Seeds of Change - John Scheepers - Henry Fields - Burgess
N: Jung - Vermont Bean - Johnny's - Seeds from Italy - Landreth
G: Baker Creek -  Peaceful Valley - Abundant Life - Park - Territorial
O:  Sandhill Preservation - High Mowing - Harris - Gurney's -Albert Lea Seedhouse


High Stakes Poker
What's needed to play?  Metal electric fence poles, gloves and enough snow over the frozen ground to make this work.

I spent some time taking down fence stakes/poles (and a few remaining cages) in the tomato field.  There were enough of them that I decided to toss some of the poles from the center of the field to the side.  And, of course, I just HAD to try to make them stand on end.  It works best to get a little loft on them.

However, if you are bad at this game, you will find yourself playing....


Where's Waldo?
When the stakes don't stand up in the snow, they...um... fall down... in the ... snow.   You get the picture.

Confetti Parade
We had some shredded paper mulch that was provided to us to trial.  I decided to try it out around a few of our bushes that didn't get wood mulch on the East line.  It wasn't all that windy.  But, I still had a bit of a confetti parade going out there.  Makes me think that this might not work so well for us.  But, I threw snow over it to help hold it down - and tomorrow's predicted rain should help too.

Chicken Feet
Our chickens don't like to go out into the snow, so they are in their room much of the time.  As a result, they get in the way more than usual when it is feeding, watering or egg picking time.  They are also very interested in whatever you are doing or whatever it is you are bringing them.  so...they get close to the human.  The game?

Try to avoid the chicken feet without tripping over waterers or feeders.  You get stuck with points if you drop any eggs or spill feed/water.  If you drop an egg, that's kind of like having to draw extra tiles in dominoes (chicken feet).  If you drop lots of eggs, you got caught with the double 9's.  Spill water on your own legs and it is a cold day - that's being caught with the double zeroes.

Going "out" means you didn't step on a chicken foot, nor did you spill or drop anything OR crack an egg by accident.  Good luck with that.

Bowling for Kittens
It was warm enough to pack snowballs and the kittens were out and about today.  So, I wondered if they would respond to snowballs being tossed.  They really didn't do anything interesting when I was throwing the snowballs.  But, when I rolled one past Mrranda, she took off after it at high speed.  The shoulder roll at the end when she caught it was something to behold.  This is clearly more Mrranda's game than Sandman's, but they'll both play.  They especially liked it when I rolled one that had momentum to get into more snow and it grew instead of shrank!

A strike - both kittens run after the rolled snowball and both try to pounce on it.
A spare - roll one snowball and get one pounce, roll a second snowball and get the other to pounce
7-10 split - roll a snowball between both kittens and they pounce on each other
gutter ball - roll a snowball and one kitten runs to YOU to be given attention and the other one cleans herself...

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