Tomorrow is the first day of April. We thought we’d be at the farm full-time by now, but nature had other plans. Plans that involved several feet of stubborn snow, primarily.

The long driveway up into the farm has been deeply buried & impassable by car, delaying & complicating our move-in.

(The snow has also made it impossible to get the greenhouse built, so we’re starting our seeds under lights at Kristin’s parents’ this year.)

Although we cannot get a car or a trailerload of stuff in, we can still park on the dirt road and hike in. Depending on the weather, our feet sink in with unpredictable & variable depth and frequency.

Fortunately, we had scavenged an oversize, heavy-duty plastic sled from an alley last year – and this sled has become our favorite homesteading tool during this snowy spring. In conditions where even a backpack’s additional weight means sinking deep into a frozen quagmire with every step, it’s a godsend.

Every trip to the farm, we pull it from the woods near the road to load it up with bags and boxes and water jugs and supplies to slide up the driveway.

We spent a rainy afternoon last Thursday chainsawing several standing dead oak trees from the woodlot – as Kristin bucked them down into woodstove-length logs, I stacked them onto the sled, up to three deep, and hauled them out of the woods to the woodpile. It would have taken several trips to carry the heavy logs by hand, and been almost impossible in the deep snow – but the sled, no matter how heavily loaded, slid easily across the surface, making for the easiest wood hauling possible.

While the seedlings are getting started indoors back in the cities, we’ve been out getting the trailer liveable, organizing the sheds and storage units, preparing tools, ordering supplies, and deeply enjoying being in the trailer and on the land!