For the rest of the week while I am in the middle of a chaotic house and dreaming of what will be, I've decided to share a photo per day of scenes from around our 70 acres.

Trees do whatever they can to survive the deluge of snow on Avalanche Slope. Depending on the snowfall, many trees end up buried under the heavy snow, hence the lean.

Antelope herd

I am sure by now that you have this idyllic little picture in your head, as we do, of life at the cabin. In the summer fishing and taking long hikes. The dogs romping off-lead. Wildflowers everywhere. In the winter you can see us tucked into our cabin sitting in front of a fire while snowflakes drift lazily past the windows. La Vie en Rose for sure! Well, at least for us it is. I can't speak for the rest of you.

Let's just take off the rose-colored glasses for a moment, shall we? They are several things that interfere with this life of bliss. The worst offender is The Wind. It deserves capitalization and respect. The Wind is both friend and foe. A friend first because it gives us power through our wind generator (seen here). 

The wind is a good source of energy for us. It fills up our little battery-powered home quickly. The one big drawback to the wind generator is the furling process. When the wind blows too hard the generator turns its tail to the wind to save itself (called furling), and when it does it makes the most god-awful noise! It sounds like a helicopter just landed on the roof. It can get very annoying to say the least. I suppose when you hear it all the time you will cease to notice after a while. Kind of like parents with screaming children. 

The wind is not our friend when it blows the snow into huge drifts and makes the roads impassable. Up here you can't really go through the drifts, you have to go over them or around them, hence the need for an all-terrain vehicle like the Polaris we are going to buy that has switchable treads; one for snow and one for normal use.

Out for a walk

The wind is sneaky. You can have a clear blue sky and still get snowed in. How you might ask? Whiteout conditions. Snow that is on the surface and not packed down is lifted up and carried by the wind. It will fill in any and every crevice (such as your newly plowed driveway) in a matter of a few minutes. We know, we've been stuck in those conditions once. 

See that greenish blip in the above photo? That's Larry, one of our neighbors, in his big green John Deere snowplow/snowblower making a path for us to follow in. I can tell you that the snow was filling our tracks in behind us as quickly as we left them. Scary. Of course, we needed to get out because Rick needed to be at work and we couldn't wait it out. In the future we will just stay where we are!

Did I mention that we live seven miles in from a road that is plowed by the state of Wyoming? Many people leave their vehicles at the house of a person who lives on the Wyoming side and drive their all-terrain vehicles to his house, then leave it there and take their normal vehicle into town or to get the mail.

And yes, there are times when we could be snowed in for weeks at a time. You just have to prepare in advance.

If all else fails at least you have snow as a reliable source of keeping your wine cool.

Taken on our property.

This post really has two related topics. I'll start with winterization.

It gets cold at the cabin. It is not unusual to see a day or two where the temperatures are -30°F, and that is without the wind chill. So, if we don't keep the cabin heated in the winter, it is wise to winterize it so we don't suffer from broken water pipes. (We actually do try to keep it heated in winter, but not always with success. But, that is the second part of this story.)

Winterizing is not really that difficult. Here are the steps:

1. Turn off the water pump at the electrical panel
2. Open all the faucets and run water until there is no more pressure, flush the toilet until the tank does not fill any more
3. In the crawlspace, open a faucet that drains the pressure tank
4. Also, open the two faucets that drain the hot and cold water lines that feed the sinks, tub and toilet
5. Pour RV antifreeze into the drains and toilet
6. Turn the hot water heater to the "Pilot" setting

It seems there should be some risk of the peanut butter and jelly (and other liquid-ish food items) freezing, but that has never happened.

I don't drain the hot water heater. I used to. But, nowadays I just leave the pilot running with the thermostat turned down. I think the small amount of heat from the pilot light keeps the tank warm enough to prevent freezing. I hope so. It has so far.

One could argue that we don't really need to winterize since we have a propane forced-air heater that we set to 45°F when we are gone. That is meant to provide enough heat to keep the cabin from freezing, which is not only good for the plumbing, but for everything else from the logs to the furniture. However, I still winterize just in case the heater doesn't work.

The heater could "not work" for a variety of reasons, most notable is the loss of electricity. Since the house is powered by the sun, if we lose the sun for several days or if snow accumulates on the solar panels preventing them from working for a few days, it is possible to drain the batteries to the point where the inverter shuts down and stops providing AC power. In that case, the heater won't work, of course.

But, we've been suffering from a greater heater woe for a couple of years. The pre-ignition blower will come on to evacuate any accumulated gasses and equalize pressure in the system, then a pressure switch activates and allows the burner to ignite and the main blower to come on. The problem is that the pressure switch never activates, so the heater never comes on. And, in the meantime, the pre-ignition blower just blows and blows and blows until it drains the batteries.

Last year, Grant from Laramie Heating came up and cleaned everything and got it working. And, he left me with a replacement pressure switch in case it acted up again -- which it did. So, I replaced the pressure switch and everything was working when we left last September. A neighbor has checked on the cabin once a week since then, and this week discovered the pre-ignition blower blowing. And, blowing. And, blowing. It could have been going as much as eight days! So, he turned off the heater.

I am sure glad the cabin is winterized!

I'll call Grant and see what he thinks. It may be time for some new heater guts or even a new heater because we can't have it not working next winter! I'll keep you posted via comments or additions to this post.

Several years ago, we had about 200 beetle-killed trees cut from our property. Beetle-killed trees are a fire hazard and we wanted to create a defensible space to the west and southwest of the cabin. (The wind almost always blows from that direction, and any wildfire would be highly likely to come from that way.) I'll likely talk more about the pine beetle infestation and the damage it has caused in Colorado forests in a future post.

The logging company we hired to do the job did cut the trees and hauled them away. But, they left a huge mess behind. There were stumps and slash that they refused to clean up. Also, some dead trees that were not cut have subsequently fallen. In short, our "meadow" was pretty ugly.

Last year we found a forest management company in Wyoming--Tiger Tree--whom we hired to clean up the site. They did a great job in trimming all stumps near the ground, cutting up fallen trees, and collecting all the trimmings into piles of "slash". Here is a photo of one of the four slash piles:

These piles are created so they can subsequently be burned. It is legal to burn these at our location subject to some rules. There must be at least 3" of snow on the ground and the wind must be 10 mph or less. And, I had to submit a request for a burn permit (easy to do online). Several agencies have to approve the request. Then, on the day of the burn the sheriff's office must be notified. 

Here is a wider view of the meadow after clean-up. You can see several of the slash piles, ready for ignition. Just need to wait for winter, snow, and no wind (along with access to the property).

We waited several months before everything lined up to make burning possible, but this week the job got done!

And, the result:

(Photo taken by a neighbor.) We'll rake this around and plant native grass and wildflower seeds!