garden in winter

Winter at the Ranch

by GardenRanch-HouseWildlife

It’s winter now and along with it brings a welcome slower pace, a time to relax and reflect as we begin to plan the upcoming year.

The photo above shows our one snow storm so far this year, 8″ of beautiful powder in early December. Other than that, it’s been a dry and warm December, with a couple of weeks in the 50’s each day and a couple in the low 60’s. While the warm weather has been nice for a couple of outdoor projects, we do need moisture and are hopeful for a snowy winter & spring ahead.

It’s peaceful and quiet here, with many of the neighbors vacating to warmer climates for the winter. As the human neighbors depart, some of the local elk come to hang around for the winter, and we always enjoy seeing them from our front windows.

For Christmas 2025, we celebrated much the same as we did in 2024, enjoying our tradition of remembering the reasons God sent His son, Jesus Christ, to bring the message of the Father, as shown in last year’s post. This has become a wonderful and meaningful way to celebrate!

The 2026 Garden & Greenhouse have been pretty much planned, most of the seeds have arrived, and I’m ready to go.

Our plan for January has been to empty the entire greenhouse of plants and allow it to freeze. Our goal is to kill off all remaining whiteflies, hoping they will not return after warming it up again. While the greenhouse is freezing, I’ll be starting new seedlings to plant as soon as we warm it up, likely February.

Our New Look in 2021

OFF-GRID

by ProjectsRanch-House

THIS IS OUR NEW LOOK IN 2021!

Tim was busy this winter putting in our solar power system, which has been a great addition to our home. The system now fully powers our house, so from now on out we are not dependent on the grid.

After a few months of hard work the project is complete. Prior to starting the project, Tim estimated that we would need 15 kW of power per day. This system provides more than that, and plenty of power to extend through several cloudy days. We are quite pleased with the result. At some point Tim may add a section here on how he did it all. If there is ever time….

We like the solar idea so much we decided to add solar panels to the electric golf cart we use to get around the property to haul tools, garden tools, etc. 

Additionally, he is now just about finished adding a roof over a portion of our back deck and stairs leading to the ground from that side. You can see it to the left of the solar panels. We felt it would be good to have a secondary exit to the ground in case the front exit is somehow blocked.

Our other big project of the year so far is that we have both become ham radio operators. You can see one white vertical antenna extending up at the right side of the house, and we’ve just completed an antenna in the trees behind the solar panels to transmit globally. It’s pretty hard to get a photo of it. Our ham experience is detailed in another post.

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WINTER PASTIMES

by DucksGardenProjectsRanch-House

BRRRRR! IT’S COLD OUTSIDE!

What do we do all winter long? Winter 2019-2020 has been colder, with fewer sunny days than the previous winters we have been here. It seems longer! Today is one of those gloomy, snowy days. The past few days have been warm enough to melt quite a bit of snow & create quite a bit of mud in the process. The driveway & paths around the house are quite muddy!

Today the ducks are all snuggled together, bills under their wings for added warmth. The ducks’ paddock has been like this much of the winter, iced up and snowy.  When it isn’t frozen, it’s muddy and messy. Most winters there are warm days I get out the pool for them, but not this winter!

The garden sits idle, snow drifted up to the top edge of the raised beds. I won’t be going out there any time soon, and I suspect it may be much later than usual before I can get out there to begin springtime chores. Indoors there has been plenty of time to order seeds and plan the garden.

Tim’s big project this winter has been handcrafting a new set of aspen furniture for us. So far he has made three end tables (one of them a unique triangle shape) and a TV stand. These are beautiful and add a homey Colorado look to our home.

When Tim isn’t in his workshop creating our aspen furniture, he’s often indoors on the computer, working on one project or another. Laurie has spent a lot of time this winter on this website, spiffing it up and learning a LOT about website design. On days like this, Goldie & KK are in the house with us, keeping warm and not wanting to miss out on what we’re doing. Laurie has also picked up crochet, and made the blanket KK sits on.