Frozen water barrels and everything else

I've been absent for a while for work, and have returned to water barrels that have thick layer of ice on top. It probably would be a good idea to empty them or I'm going to suffer cracked barrels. Nighttime temperatures for the past week+ have been in the low to mid single-digits, and highs in the 40s. There is still snow left in all shaded areas from the snowfall we had over a week ago. I'm sure the soil is drying out already, and the forecast through Thanksgiving is more continued dry conditions.
The sparrows and a couple chickadees are attacking the suet outside.
A great blue heron has been hanging out over at the Empire Canal, and deer are making a strong showing at the Home Lake Veteran's Center next door. Our front yard has small piles of deer scat; that's their calling card from eating the fallen crab apples from this fall. T'was a great crop of apples.
We alpine skiied at Wolf Creek last Sunday, and conditions were excellent--they couldn't have been any better, remarkable for November 15. Though there were a few covered stumps and rocks, their presence paled next to the amount & quality of the fresh snow, and few people.

New alpaca poop

Buckets & buckets of alpaca poop to nourish my compost and gardens! I made a trip today to the corral of co-workers who raise alpacas. It had been a while since I'd been there, and there's an addition of a couple more poop-producing critters since my last visit.

A convenient feature of alpacas & llamas is that they concentrate their poop versus scattering it all over the corral, so it's fairly easy to fill up a few wheelbarrow loads in a short time span. The poop was mixed with a little straw (great addition), and I think was also wetted by the animals' urine. That too is a good additive for the compost-heating process.

To mark the acquisition of fresh manure, I turned the contents of my Earth Machine, and added some new manure mixed with old grass clippings and a bunch of leaves. With the addition of water & time, I should see a pretty good jump in temperature in a few days. I also emptied the contents of my tumbler composter since it was mostly finished, sifted it, and then put it on my rearranged raised beds and the tomato bed. Then I added a bunch of alpaca poop, old grass clippings, leaves, and water and spun it a few times.

Alpaca/llama manure is not extremely high in nitrogen; its carbon/nitrogen ratio is between 15/1 to 25/1. Compare that to poultry and rabbit manure which can have a ratio of 4/1; it's extremely high in N and can really heat up a compost pile when mixed with a bunch of carbon, or brown, items. But my experience both in Wisconsin and here is that it's not as easy to acquire quantities of poultry and rabbit manure, as it is that from larger, hooved animals like horses, cows, and llamas/alpacas. Alpaca/llama manure can also be directly mixed in with garden soil with little concern for harming plants; this practice is not recommended for higher N manures.

Vegetable garden rearrangement

Though growing & harvesting seasons are over, the work is not yet! Yesterday & today were spent doing some moving around of the raised beds I've put in place over the last few summers. The shadow cast by the 6'-high fence is visible in the image, and three out of my four beds were in the shaded part of the garden from October through April or so. Cold & usually frozen soil would be the result; in fact, when I started this moving process yesterday I encountered already-frozen soil. Lots of energy was spent moving huge chunks of frozen dirt out into the sun where they will eventually thaw, hopefully before the next round of low temperatures arrive. What was nice to see in all of these big chunks of dirt were dozens of little worm holes; looks like I have a healthy population of worms working on my soil texture & organic matter.

Surprisingly, my compost containers that are in the shade haven't frozen yet. I also started another batch of compost in my Home Composter unit. I doubt that it'll get hot but maybe it'll warm up a little.

Active life in State Wildlife Area

Low temperatures overnight made vegetation frosty & white. On a morning walk at the Rio Grande State Wildlife Area, we were fortunate to view abundant birdlife -grebe, ducks, Canada geese, sandhill cranes, probable marsh hawks, and at least one other type of hawk sitting on a fence post.

A beaver family has, over the past couple of months, established a lodge and food stash in the SWA in a place we've not seen one at before. The water near which the lodge sits has already begun to freeze over. The warm weather to come in this week will probably thaw it. Dog sits there for scale.