Winter rolls on

It's been a long and bitterly cold winter so far and it seems to be far from over.  Today was one of the mildest days with the temperatures getting up to 47 degrees, but the overnight prediction tonight is zero, with dangerous wind chills for the next 48 hours.  I have some concern how these unusually cold temperatures are going to affect the survival of my fruit trees and vines as well as my bees.  The bees were still alive when I last was able to check a few weeks ago but it has not gotten warm enough to do more than to check to see if there is some minimal amount of movement.

Here hardened drifts of snow left over from some of our snow falls so far run along the west fence of the garden, coated with a shadow of dirt apparently having been carried by some of the high winds we have been having.

My two hives are shown here.  I have bales of straw stacked to the west and north of the hives hoping to block the worst of the winter winds.  I have taken the time that I've been confined to the indoors to construct some nuc boxes -- six medium boxes that will make up three double-box nuc hives -- if I have bees surviving to put in them.  I am also contemplating maybe making some kind of bait hives, though I doubt there are many feral hives to collect swarms from in my area.  I also plan to start some mead brewing soon and I am gathering the material for that.

A New Year

Sunday morning broke with falling and blowing snow and temperatures dropping rapidly.  The weather service describes this as the coldest weather mass in many years.  The snow had started Saturday night and continued through most of the daylight hours of Sunday.  This picture was taken out of our front door looking toward the garden.

I ventured out in the snow to take some pictures,  It seemed to be seven or eight inches deep, though it is hard to tell when it is blowing around so much.  This is looking down our lane past the garden, with snow blowing up the lane.  The area around our house, which is surrounded on three sides by forest, is somewhat protected, so the blowing snow was much greater beyond the garden.

Looking toward the garden with a drift off the edge of the lane.

Looking up the lane at the blowing snow from the same location.

Birds at the bird feeder with snow blowing off of the roof of the back porch.  The feeders have been very busy during all of this time.  Temperatures were about 15 below zero on Monday morning, and didn't get quite up to zero through the day.  The dip down well below zero again tonight, but are supposed to "warm" up in the teens tomorrow.

I took this picture this evening after we had someone plow the lane.  I couldn't do it with my tractor, which has no cab, with the  wind chills so dangerously low.  I tried to drive out of the lane with our four wheel drive pickup but got stuck in a drift and barely made it back.  Our flat field to the right was transformed into storm-tossed waves of snow, with billowing drifts two or three feet high.  Unfortunately, these drifts got into the lane in spots.