Around The Farm As Winter Hung On

The little Barred Rock Bantams have had to stay indoors as winter continued to hang on. But they are happy and healthy:

And they sure eat a lot:

They're also laying a lot of eggs:

Every few days I scramble the accumulated eggs for the dogs, collecting the shells in a bowl. On this day I had twenty eggs to scramble. They are smaller than full sized chicken eggs, but larger than you'd expect from such small birds:

And the snow kept coming, well into spring, blowing through the cracks in the barn door and around the windows, collecting inside:

And piling up outside the barn door. This door's threshold was at least six inches off the ground and yet still I had quite an accumulation there when I opened the door. This is what springtime looked like this year in the north country:

The cows, however, had to spend their days outside. On this day, though, I took pity on them. They looked so cold and miserable that I let them inside the barn:

The hay in their bale feeder built up higher and higher - and so did the hay and manure outside the feeder. The end result was my giant, red ladies climbing right inside their feeder to get at what they considered the best hay:

The cows spent most of every day at the bale feeder, no doubt wishing for the pastures to green up again:

Violet took a nap on the snowy ground. One would think her udder would get cold:

My hay bales varied widely in quality. Some bales were eaten with gusto and some were snubbed as not good enough. This one was a big hit:

I was driving down the road on the tractor when I saw these wild turkeys. I stopped to snap their photo but they began moving toward cover as soon as I pulled out the camera: