Home on the Hill

Xena likes to help with some of the chores. Making kindling is one of her specialties. We are now working on having her deposit the wonderfully chopped kindling in the kindling bucket. She also enjoys vermin eradication. She can smell the voles underneath the snow and does a headfirst dive to get them. She is surprisingly successful. The cats take care of under and in the sheds - the fields and snow banks are Xena's domain. Yesterday I moved Boose, the shop cat, permanently into the new shop. When I took away my heavy shirt she was using for sleeping and lounging purposes she looked a bit miffed - only to be right jollied up when I replaced it with her heated sleeping box. It has a small electric blanket that keeps it nice and toasty. But I think the big improvement was the litter box. Going out for a crap when it's Thirty below probably wasn't on her fun things to do list. Eventually her sleeping quarters will be up near the ceiling. I have to wait for a skidsteer ...

I finished the painting job so now have some time to play wi--er work in the yard. My brother Tom came up and dropped a bobcat off for us to use. He makes it look easy. When I use it it's a little more jerky operation but I am starting to get the hang of it. It can sure move a lot more snow in an hour than I can with the snowblower or shovel. It's down to -14c here and we certainly have the furnace going all the time. I am hopeing it snows some more to cover up all the dirt that I dug up while practicing with the Bobcat. Here's a video of Tiny showing me how a pro uses the BobCat. Actually it really shouldn't be called a BobCat as that's a trade name for a similar machine. I guess calling it a Case Skid Steer while more accurate, isn't that helpful tho. He's moving the snow away from the blue shed so I can get at it to make some repairs. In the vidio you can see the service stack being removed from the snow. We found out why the stack came down wh...