I adore this photo taken on the first skiff of snow with Remmi (this is about the same amount of snow we got overnight) and I like that its perfect for the post..
Winter is here and keep on moving forward with FOCUS!
Well, winter is here both in terms of the start of the colder temps outside, the ponds have a skim of ice on them, the buckets are the same, time for the heated buckets, the big heated dog bowl for the barn cats, and the combo light/heat lamp has been put on for the laying birds.
Looking out my window, my landscape is White, Brown, Green and Red.. Christmas colors but in a all natural food forest.. White from snow, Green from the spruces, cedars, Brown from all the different small bird feeding seeds heads waving in the winds, and reds, Red branches on bushes, Red fruit on the hawthorn, and the tops of the high bush cranberries are covered in red fruit..
In between all that is flashes of colors, yellow, reds, blues as the birds are all a flutter from feeder to feeder.. We are running four feeders this winter, with the possablity of a 5th, we will see..
However there is a different take that wordings.. “winter is here” since early spring of 2021, right up into late fall, I have over and over in different posts talked about expanding the garden, putting up, stocking up, prepping ahead as “winter is coming”
Well, that winter is here as well.. In so many ways.. but lets stay in the here and now..
So how was your BLACK Friday? (if you live in a part of the world that does Black Friday) I had to be on the road in mid morning as I needed to take Bells Kitten for his second set of vaccine shots, rabies, health check up (perfect bill of health) I was truly surprised at how crazy busy the roads were..
You see it was raining, freezing rain, sleet and snowing in a steady back and forth and trust me, if I had not needed to keep that appointment for Bells medical needs, there is no way whatsoever you would have gotten me out on those roads so I was shocked at how many peaple were out.. it was not the morning or afternoon commute timing and I took the back highways that have a max 80km speed, as I did not want to be on the bigger high speed (and so many more big trucks)..
I finally went, it has to be peaple out coming and going for black friday sales, I watched on facebook as friends posted they were heading out for their christmas shopping and or folks that shared either that they were proud that they did NO amazon shopping and others that shared that they rocked it on amazon black friday sales..
We did not go out shopping, we did buy one thing on the sales.. What, O what could get us to fork over some of our hard earned cash, while saving a 100 dollars..
LOL fancy tooth brush systems.. while I will always keep regular old tooth brushes in the house, we are going to step up our system and see if it will help our teeth/gum health..
That’s it for us at this time.. a total 1st world, our life is still pretty normal choice.. It felt odd to read the news, to see all that is going on and then to do such a mundane buy..
Did you sit this Black Friday out?
Did you go out and shopped till you dropped?
Did you watch sales with a hawk eye and carefully crafted list by your side?
Did you spend less or more then last year?
Did you find the sales were there? Did you find what you wanted? Was there empty shelves, how was stock in your neck of the woods..
My mom went for a small sale in central alberta and all the shelves and sale areas were sold out at the canadian tire.. and yet my girlfriend in Alberta, was clearly very successful on her shopping trip.. It appears to be the same for other friends, depending on what you wanted, some things had lots and other had little amounts and went very fast..
Just another Day on the Farm 
Hello Val. Winter has come here as well as we had a light dusting of snow this morning, though by the time we got up, it at all melted. It is very cold and windy here though as Storm Arwen is wreaking havoc – though nothing on the scale to what Canada has experienced, of course.
Glad Bells is all well and healthy – I did not realise you had to vaccinate for rabies in Canada? Is this a common thing to do for pets? (In Norway and the UK I think you only vaccinate for it if you intend to take your pet abroad)
The case numbers are still very high in the UK and the variant from Africa is a concern, and I have become more and more quite anti-consumerist as I have gotten older. We have far too much stuff anyway and nothing really we need to replace (knowing me, something will break down within a month now, meaning we have to buy it full price!) So no bargain shopping for me, except buying a game on Steam that was on sale for my nephew for Christmas.
Good Day Silver, yes, even my horse’s get rabies vaccines as the bats can have it, but yes for the cats and dogs for sure, even my wildest farm cats I will do my very best to trap them and get them their rabies and then a booster every 3 years.. we have a enough of a rabies issue (as in its NEVER going away) that we have have rabies vaccines dropped to try and vaccinate in the wild animal population..
https://news.ontario.ca/en/bulletin/57411/annual-rabies-bait-drop-to-begin
Ontario’s bait drop program is one of the most successful rabies control programs in North America.
Since the start of a rabies outbreak in 2015 – the first of its kind in over a decade – the ministry has taken action to protect communities by distributing over five million vaccine baits, focusing on a 50-km area around where all the rabies cases were discovered.
Since 2016, rabies cases have declined in Ontario by approximately 50 per cent each year
They do mass radio newspaper and TV ads when they are doing the air dropped baits, trying to make sure that the wildlife get them, not domestic dogs/cats but they also will do bait drops in feral cat colonies in the cities and so on as well..
It is by law, the only vaccine I am required to give to my dogs/cats.. strangely not a law for the horses but still a good idea.. everything else is my own choice on what they do or do not get..
I have been reading about the new variant, we followed your own country and withing 6 hours of yours annoucing that the flights were banned etc, ours did the same.. I guess time will show what comes of it..
Thank you for the context Val about rabies! I know here in the UK we are advised not to handle bats barehanded, aside from that pets are vaccinated for it if they travel abroad.
Yes I am reading the news with a magnifying glass at the moment, keeping an eye on it to see how things will impact us, time will tell…..