Sunday, January 19
We had snow flurries this morning! Yay!!!
It didn’t amount to anything but our school of thought is if it’s going to be this cold we might as well see some pretty snow.
We’ve actually had a pretty decent winter so far. A few very cold days and nights here and there and then some really crazy warm days but, for the most part, it’s been a very comfortable winter. Today and the next couple of days it’s supposed to be cold. Like high’s in the low to mid 30’s cold then it warms up again towards the end of the week.
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Today our tenth booking checked out. That means we’ve had twenty guests enter the doors to experience our tiny primitive-plus cabin in two and a half months. And, so far, they have all loved it! Whew. But what does the tenth booking signify? It means that if the guests that checked out today give us a good review with a 5 star rating then we will become Airbnb Superhosts – yay!!! Pretty cool to achieve that status in less then 70 days since we first listed it on the Airbnb website.
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It was a long afternoon of ironing at work but I’m home now and plan on relaxing the rest of the evening. No crocheting. No projects. Just mindlessly playing a puzzle or solitaire game on my iPad.
Oh, speaking of crocheting, I started to undo the edging on my hexagons last night but then CountryBoy started playing the new version of Little Women and, well, there was no undoing to be had. I actually watched the whole thing WITHOUT something in my hands! I liked this version very much and I actually enjoyed sitting down and watching a movie. (That doesn’t happen very often.)
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Farm news: six eggs
Monday, January 20
We woke up to a bit of snow on the ground…
It wasn’t much and it was mainly on the hillside but boy was it powdery. I couldn’t help but think how fun it would be to have a lot of this powdery snow on the hillside and to slide down it. Woohoo!
We had light flurries for much of the day that didn’t amount to anything. What a beautiful sight it was to see outside my window at work. Snowflakes fluttering here and there. It was peaceful and soothing. Like I said, if it’s going to be cold then I want to see some snow ;).
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I had a hard time getting motivated to get ready for work. I really did not want to go in and I waited until the last possible minute to get ready. In fact, I waited a few minutes PAST the last minute possible and was a few minutes late. Work was OK. Nothing to write home about. I’ve got all but two of the pages I typically do laid out already. Tomorrow I will finish those up and do whatever else needs to be done to get the pages ready to be emailed to the printer.
I remember the days of cut and paste. While I was getting my education in Graphic Design the industry was transitioning to digital. I was fortunate to have learned both methods. Today everything is done on the computer which allows for much more creativity and it’s much easier to correct any mistakes. The completed pages are then emailed to the printer so the days of a newspaper having to own and operate their own printer are long gone.
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We are still waiting on our last guests to write a review about their stay. Hopefully they will write one soon. If not, I may just prompt them to do so. This review (providing it’s a good one!) will be the final one needed to change our Airbnb status from Host to Superhost. Fingers crossed!
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Farm news: six eggs
Tuesday, January 21
From morning snow flurries to afternoon sunshine. Crazy!
As the dark of night gave way to daylight it started to snow. We could see a few flakes falling and then every now and then there would be a huge one. Gradually the flakes became larger and there were more of them.
I headed on in to work grinning the whole way as I watched the snow fall about me. It was so peaceful. On the way I decided to stop and capture a swinging bridge and cascading water driveway as the powdery snow fell…
Walking a few feet and facing a different way is this view…
I have wanted to capture these images for quite a while now and this morning seemed like the perfect time.
The above driveway is impassable after some of our heavier rains as the creek becomes almost twice as large and moves rather swiftly. Thank goodness for the swinging bridge one can at least walk across if need be.
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Farm news: five eggs
After work I went to visit Mabel…
She’s been staying warm laying under her heat lamp which means she hasn’t been getting much exercise so we’ve had to cut back on her food a bit. She’s still huge. We really think she’s a mix of pot belly and possibly razorback because of her size. Maybe she’s just a large pot belly pig. We’ll never know but either way she is one sweet girl and we are so happy she wandered into our lives!
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The egg count is up a bit and we actually have three dozen eggs in our farm stand fridge. Yay!
At last count CountryBoy counted 47 chickens. I don’t know what we’ll do with all the eggs once the young’uns start laying. Probably lots of egg salad, hard-boiled eggs, deviled eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, over-easy eggs, and so on and so on!
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CountryBoy has ordered a truckload of rock for the rest of the road to the cabin that should arrive tomorrow. The ground is frozen so he thinks the truck should be able to access it to dump it directly on the road. If the driver is successful we will get another load for the circle drive by the cabin. That should complete the cabin roadway and should help with access to the cabin via the guest’s own vehicle. This will be a huge worry off our minds because even though guests are welcome to use the side-by-side there’s the possibility of them getting mud slung on them after it rains. Although, most of them have been thrilled with being able to use the side-by-side and didn’t care about a little mud. whew!
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Not farm news but speaking of the cabin we got our tenth review and we now qualify for Superhost status. But… after some more research I discovered that we won’t actually get the Superhost badge on our listing until some time in April. Airbnb reviews hosts on a quarterly basis and after that review is when the badge will show on the host’s listing. Oh well, we are on the right track.
Dream Valley Farmstead 