Prepping for Another Storm

We're in the process of digging out from our PACNW storm from the last couple of days and getting ready for the next. Depending where you live in the PACNW, you either have snow and ice, or rain and ice, both of which can wreak havoc. Our roads have a buildup of snow and the county and city are not keeping up. Over in the Seattle area, they are having rain and ice with lots of thawing and flooding. Our neighbor is a pilot and made it to Portland yesterday. There were no flights out to Seattle, so he rented a car and drove to the SeaTac airport in Seattle and to get to his car. He chipped his car free of 2" of ice. He finally got his windshield wipers free and his car dug out, so he headed over the mountain pass and persevered through the snow and ice. He made it all the way to his driveway, but his son, who was supposed to have plowed it out (he barely plowed earlier in the day, but it continued to snow), hadn't fulfilled his duty. Yep, he got stuck in his own driveway. He angrily trudged through the snow to his house. He was so mad he went and got his son up out of bed at midnight to plow the driveway and get his car dug out.

This was on Thursday afternoon.

DH got the driveway plowed, so now he is on to  getting the barn cleared and a path through the field for the horses. We haven't bought hay in years. We just fence off our front field and then in the winter when it snows, we just plow a path for the horses. They just paw through and eat what's in the field.

Here he's plowing out the barn. It's really more of a loafing shed and it's also the hen house. The chickens, by the way, are too chicken to venture out into the snow once it's more than a 1/2  inch deep. So we just open up both sides of the hen house so they have room to stretch their legs a bit. We normally just have them in the right side of the barn.

And here he's blazing a path for the horses so they can eat.

While he's plowing, I've got 3 1/2 pints of sausage in the canner, and 3 quarts of bacon. I allowed one package of bacon per qt., but you know, now packages are only  12 oz. and not a pound, so my quarts of bacon are a little lean. Next time, I will buy some more and add 4 more slices per jar so I have a whole pound in each jar. I got 7 patties per jar from 2 pounds of sausage and I have 2 patties in a 1/2 pint jar. Since I mixed jar sizes, I will process for 1 hour and 30 min. I don't usually mix sizes, but I was bored and needed to can up the meat, so, that's what I did.

And a big welcome to Carolyn! She has a nice blog at the  neighborly place.