Quiet Christmas Eve

The weather is quiet - no new snow, blue sky, sunshine. My temperament is more receptive to a Christmas with gray skies, swirling snowflakes, and cold temperatures. Therefore, we will spend part of Christmas skiing into and staying at a backcountry yurt, where there will likely be swirling snowflakes and cold temperatures, though possibly no gray skies.
The image above is one of a yurt that we stayed a couple of winters ago with several friends. The weather evident in that photo is what I relish!

Flicker at the birdfeeder

Last weekend a pair of flickers appeared in the backyard - one female and one male. They even attempted to perch on the finch feeder perches, and looked pretty funny while doing so.
Most of the yard is still snow-covered but with temperatures some days in the mid-30s, it won't be for long.
Nights have been in single digits, both above and below 0.
Snow up in the mountains is piling up quickly; we've had a few days of high-quality skiing and snowshoeing already so early in the season.

SNOW & COLD

Yep, it's that time of year! A supposed blizzard (really! Even the National Weather Service is calling it that) is hitting the San Juan Mountains west of us, and the San Luis Valley is supposed to get about 3-4" of snow by end of tomorrow or so. Wolf Creek is due to get about 50" of snow out of this storm! Hooray for skiing!
All of my water barrels are now empty for the season, bird feeders are full for now, and the birdies have water kept thawed by the new water heater.
We went jogging at the Rio Grande State Wildlife Area yesterday, and saw a lone great blue heron. I bet we'll keep seeing it throughout the winter, which I marvel at. What does it find to eat? All the sandhill cranes appear to be absent now; the very cold temperatures we had this past week (low was -10F) probably drove them away to the Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico.
I've already received two 2010 garden supply/seed catalogs! Even I think that's a bit early.....

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.