KW-02 Snow and Ice

Winter accommodations for pigs, people and mice.

It has been a wintry, quiet week at the barracks. For almost all of the week, the thermometer has been stuck at around minus 5 and every surface bejewelled with condensed ice. Certainly, colder at night; but for a brief winter sirocco second, we jumped up to 3 or 4 positive degrees enjoined by one hell of a wind. All of the ice melted in an hour, and then it snowed.

I have kept up the 4x 30 minute programme all week, but I really couldn’t tell you what I mostly did. Until I sit in front of the fire, and realise that it was probably nearly all chopping wood, bringing it inside, and stacking it up.

I talked last week about the coordination inherent in any physical task and the acquiring of it for new skills. This week I was reminded that barracks life is also a story of seasonal muscle memory. When it snows, and it looks like the snow is here to stay, you really do have to shovel it away from any path you are planning on walking. If you don’t, it compacts hard to ice on the first footfall and overnight, especially if it snows on top, it becomes mirror slippery and impossible to see. Also, much harder to shovel up again. But the real reason is that walking on snow makes for very cold and wet feet. Walking on even icy paths through the show is absolutely fine.

So I set about creating paths. Since last winter, my body had completely forgotten how to do this without pain, and on the first day I did the roughly 20 meters from the loft to the big house, and went to bed with throbbing arms and back and legs. By the time I woke up the next day, the aches and pains had already left me, and I recalled how to do it with minimal effort. I cleared from the wood shop to the wood store, from the wood store to the loft. From the loft to the second door of the Big House, and from there to the pigs. Also from the loft to the gate. In total, about 400m. At 40cm wide, 10cm of snow to clear, that’s 16 cubic meters of the cold white powder hoofed out of the way.

Of course, I would have liked to have done the path a little straighter than this, but we’ll suffer this one with dry feet and a chance to enjoy the vista.

And the second that I had finished, it started to rain.

If it had stayed raining, there would be no snow, the void that is the path deleted: a total waste of time. But fortunately, for those who enjoy sunk cost fallacies, it didn’t. But yes, in that moment, a brief reprimand was uttered to the sky, an objurgatious prayer of blue, dedicated to that Murphy and his pesky Laws.

A mouse house in the woodpile

I didn’t spot this mouse house in the wood pile until I had already uncovered it completely. I know they tell you to check specifically wood piles for hibernating creatures, but I didn’t. This is the first time I have come across one, and it was extremely well tucked in, in a space between logs. And, I’m sorry mouse, but I do need the wood.

I hadn’t seen the scurrying of escaping mouse families out of the corner of my eye while chopping and it does look long abandoned, but it made me sad to see, just in case I have evicted them like a slum landlord. Notice how the bedding is made from all sorts of splinters and straw and furballs and paper packaging, but off to one side of is the latrine. That is a considerable pile of mouse droppings. I love the way that the wee rodent probably didn’t have to leave home to relieve himself. Just angled the butt backwards out of the entrance, and dropped it over the side. Very neat and tidy.

At some point last year, a very good friend of the barracks asked what I really needed. I said metal fence posts for the piggies. Here they are, doing their job way better than the old plastic ones ever did. The fence was in a straight line, but the snow put such a lot of extra weight on it, I need to tension the fence, so I pulled one of the posts out of square, and moved it back a bit. Can you see all the pig scuffling around it? They knew that under the snow, there was some fresh vegetation, and snouted it all out within a couple of hours.

Talking of which, the pigs generally prefer to perform the necesarials in a different house to the one they sleep in as well. Which is not a good idea. The way it is supposed to work is that they poo and pee at home, I then cover it in fresh straw, and when it all starts to rot beneath them, they get underfloor heating! I can happily report that their houseproud squeamishness has finally lost out to their dislike of going outside in the cold, and their parlour is now the warmest place in the barracks!

The week ahead.

This next week, there will hopefully be lots of sawing. I counted my pennies and decided that, thanks to the problems with the bank at the end of last year (they locked my account and I couldn’t get into it for over two months. A great savings plan), I had enough, just, to buy a decent saw for the tomato house. I went for a classic Japanese Ryoba 240 which has one side for cutting (across the diameter of the wood) and one for ripping (down the length of it). So yeah, hopefully that.

Wish me luck with it. I have never used a Japanese saw made for substantial woodworking before, just small ones for fancy joints.

Other than that, I shall be eating beans and potatoes and cabbage and kale

I’ll let you know in a week. Until then, please be loving to all things, and I shall wish you well

Your loving Pirate Ben

xoxo