A week in and the snow is old now. Crusty and heavy and littered everywhere with bits and pieces. Flotsam and jetsam. We still have more than a foot of it in the fields though! And I continue to be thankful for my grassy, muddy paths.

I tried to use one of the packed snow paths yesterday, and darned near threw a knee out. Our slick mud doesn’t seem near as slippery as usual; it certainly provides much more traction than ice.

Most Canadian smallholders – anyone with a yard they need to get around in during winter really – knows the value of a thoroughly-cleared pathway much more than I did until this year. Here in lotus land, where snow doesn’t keep well, we haven’t needed these winter factoids. But we’re learning. Plus getting a better sense of the chilly conditions our fellow citizens cope with all winter long. Brrrrrrrr. All the respect to my prairie and central Canada-dwelling relatives, friends and co-workers. The coast is getting a taste this year of your every-winter reality. And isn’t the sky so blue against the snow! ❤️

I had decided that this would be the winter it didn’t snow. It’s been so warm, up until the last couple weeks! I don’t think we’ve had more than a couple hard frosts all year and besides, we were due for a mild winter. Here in our coastal valley we often get a year, or even two in a row, with no snow. And we almost made it. Until the polar vortex met the pineapple express. A ton of chill and a ton of wet meant a ton of snow for southern Vancouver Island.

From Sunday night to Tuesday afternoon it fell almost uninterrupted, the bulk coming down in the first 24 hours. At its fluffiest, our snow was at least 22 inches deep. Early this evening, when I finally remembered to bring out the ruler, it had compacted down to 18. Tonight as I write this, it has started snowing again. There is. So. Much. Snow.

As anyone who tends livestock knows, cold weather makes for heavy work. We were already carrying buckets of warm water every time we made the trip out to the barnyard. The water lines out there have been frozen for at least a week, since the vortex began her visit. Now we must carry our heavy, splashy load through knee-high snow drifts, or teeter along snow-packed shovel-carved causeways, trying to keep from slipping off into the loose stuff, not always successfully. I can’t decide which is more difficult. Both seem to engage different sets of muscles, so I alternate.

We are enjoying ourselves though. B is on his Kubota, plowing the half-kilometre long lane we share with a few others. A couple of the other neighbourhood men are out too, one walking his snowblower down the road, another perched on his lawn tractor using his homemade blade. Having fun playing with their big boy toys.

My commute to work is short (down the hallway to my home office) and the internet is still on, so there’s no interruption there. That’s one of the downsides of my job, no time off in poor weather. Such is life. But I’m outside at chore time; early morning, noon and nightfall.

In this weather I’m outside working for longer sure, but it’s beautiful out there, especially at night. And so quiet, with few cars on the roads, no planes overhead. The little harbour-to-harbour seaplanes that fly straight down our valley must be grounded. Schools closed, buses partly shut down, ferries too.  Standing out in the crisp cool air last night, I heard a foghorn call, loud and clear, its cozy grey moan rolling in from the sea and echoing across our muddy valley.

Last night the snow icing sugared the trees, every twig etched clearly in white. Tonight, the snow has aged, congealed, lost its powdery texture, and the trees look as though dabbed by tubes of thick white frosting.

The poor chickens aren’t enjoying the snow, it keeps them penned. And the donkeys and horse aren’t thrilled either. The dogs enjoy it, but they get to spend most of their day snoozing in the warm house.

I am kind of enjoying this latest weather drama, so far anyway, despite its inconveniences. It’s snowing again now, and supposed to keep going all night. I wonder what we’ll wake up to?

Barely two weeks into winter and two big weather events under our belts already!

It has been a wild one so far, with the worst windstorm in BC Hydro’s history battering the west coast on the eve of the winter solstice. Three quarters of a million of us lost power, some for more than two weeks, and over Christmas too. We were lucky here in our muddy valley, our lights stayed on and our well stayed online. We had no internet for a couple days, and no cable TV, but those were minor inconveniences. 

A couple days after the windstorm, we drove 300 km up island to spend Christmas with family. We got lucky again, it only took three hours, not the 6.5 it had taken our kids the day before. The traffic lights were back on, thank you BC Hydro crews, but the highway corridor was still a war zone.

Both sides of the road and the centre line were green with fir needles, twigs and boughs. In some places, huge conifers lay every few feet all along the roadside, fallen soldiers with raw fresh-sawn stumps glowing rusty orange through the grey wintry gloom. Side roads were closed entirely.

From Boxing Day to the 29th of December, 96 straight hours of west coast misty rain lubricated the efforts of the 900-odd people working double shifts to repair our power grid, and they had the lights back on most everywhere by the 31st.

New Years was quiet, but on January 2, with our creek still busy digesting her latest voluminous meal, the most massive rainstorm in years stalled over Vancouver Island for 48 hours, delivering record-breaking amounts of rainfall. It just poured.

So here we are, still only at the beginning of January, with peak mud levels in our muddy valley. The creek is a many headed hydra, snaking all across the north fields before collecting herself to slip under the heavy timber driveway bridge with bare inches to spare. Still in a mad rush, she squeezes her bulk into the narrow deep channel that skirts the house, filling it to its very tippy top and splashing over the edges. 

We are lucky too, that the people who built this place situated the house where they did, on the high side of the creek. Any overflow goes the other way, out towards the fields, and our valley-bottom house never floods, no matter what Mother Nature throws at us.

Today, finally, exactly two weeks into winter; sunshine. The calm after the storms. I luxuriate in the rays of honeyed light. With no new storms in the forecast, things should settle down now for a bit. What a relief, for us and the barnyard crew. Everyone is pretty fed up with this challenging weather.

Oh. Crap. What’s that? You gotta be kidding me, another weather warning? Wind gusts to 90km/h tomorrow? Sigh. Ok. Here we go again.