We don't trap the Otters Here

We have lots of Otters here. A mom with 2 pups, a large aggressive male and others. We enjoy watching their antic's. Hannah has a feud going on with them and we believe both sides are enjoying the event. Right now the mom and pups are staying at an area we have to drive by each day. The area is covered with dead fish remains and little piles of scat. They know not to ---- in their water. If they can keep the water from freezing they can use this area for along time. But as you can see today in -30 they are having a hard time.

Doing trail in the winter

With a good 7 feet of snow on the ground now, making trail in the winter is just giving the trail a brush cut. We'll give it a clean shave in the spring.

Shovelling the Chicken house

Bryan was heading out to clear the Inklin trail east of here. I am a hindrance when there is so much new snow. He has to keep looking back to make sure I'm still coming. So my job today is to shovel off the chicken house. "How am I going to get up there, I ask"...."Just put on your snowshoes and walk up". So that is how I got up there after three shovel fulls off the roof. There was a good 3 ft of heavy snow and lots of frozen ice. I used a rubber mallet. Temp is 0 today. Hard to remember that a little over a week ago it was -30. We have 8 chickens and they have given us 6 to 8 eggs a day since they started laying the beginning of Oct. They have laying mesh in their warm house, but each day they also get all our vegetable clippings and they love pasta. We also give them whole wheat and oyster shell.
There is a wire strung door dividing Bryan's little skinning shop and the chicken indoor house. He talks to them and they talk away back. He really loves his chickens. Last week I said to Bryan, "I must look up dark circle around eyes disease on chickens". "It wasn't like that yesterday." Bryan looked at me strange as I headed to the computer. He called out..."it's eating too many chicken feathers disease." Now he knows more about chickens then me, so I nodded and said okay. "I'll look it up. There must be something we can do." He started laughing ....and admitted he had circled that one chickens eyes with black marking pen. It's the only one picking feathers off the other ones, and now we can watch him.






Bryan road into the yard on Poncho at 5:30 all smiles....his day had been real hard, just like the last two days breaking trail after 3 ft of new snow but at least the box was full. A nice Lynx and 2 Marten.

Four Feet of Snow in 2 Days

When it decides to snow here....does it ever come down. There was a good 3 foot base before and now it is all white. Bryan decided to go and take down the Goat Trail sets. This is a short line of 2 1/2 km close to our cabin. It usually takes 40 minutes round trip. Bryan went alone so that he would not have to keep looking back to see if I had made it. He took Pancho (550 Tundra long track) and a toboggan to haul boxes and traps (Griz tear down boxes if left out). He left at 11 am. The toboggan only made it to the bottom of the hill and was ditched. With four new feet of snow it was horrible. He just kept making another run up with snow drifting off the top of the Skidoo until he was stuck...but Pancho can back up like crazy....there is no machine like it....it just steps up onto the snow and backs down. Once up the hill and onto the first ridge he had the tree-well problem....every tree was like a trap. Also just on the way up there were 15 trees across the trail...Bryan said it was like a hand faller was up there. All the snow in the trees from the last 2 months and then another 4. He said there was snow plops happening everywhere. If one of these hit you it is like a 50 lb sack of cement. He made it to 1 km from the top and had to snowshoe the last 1km.... some of the open alder patches had 9 feet of snow. At one point as he was struggling he felt his ears go....like when you are in an airplane. This lasted until 9pm.
I had been outside since 2:30 shovelling snow and was SO VERY GLAD TO SEE THE SKIDOO LIGHTS.  It was 5 pm and it had taken him 6 hours....He said to me "I didn't think I was going to make it".