Winter

Winter is a funny thing down here.  It's sporadic and changeable.  One week ago today was the official beginning of winter but our one and only freeze so far this year was several weeks ago.  We had 1/4 inch of ice in all the water troughs,

ice on the last of the fall flowers,

and ice on my truck.

I love frost and waking up to crisp mornings, but we have also had the air conditioning on so it hasn't been consistently cold.  This week has been glorious with bright sunny days, cool breezes and being sure the animals have hay in the evening to keep them warm overnight.

Hay is very precious this year with our horrible drought so I give it out regularly but sparingly.  The ponies will eat every single morsel they can get into their mouths.  It looks like the area around the hay feeder has been vacuumed.  At the other end of the spectrum are the goats.  They tend to spread the hay around but once its been on the ground and they have walked through it, they won't eat it so they waste a lot.

The llamas and alpacas are somewhere in between.  They spread it around more than the ponies do and lay in it while they're munching but they do a much better job of clean-up than the goats.

I am hopeful for continuing cool temperatures and we really need more rain.  The last statistic I heard said we are behind by somewhere between 25 and 35 inches of rain.  That's a lot of rain to not have.