The last event of the season has finished, and the inevitable winterizing of my life begins this week. Every fall I go through a two week period where I obsess about the onslaught of winter, the dark, grey cloud full of rain and snow is just parked east of us waiting for the green light to descent upon me and leave me moping around for another 4 months. Last year Granite Falls was in the news WAY too much for climate tragedies, and I pride myself that I don’t live there. It was very wearisome to have a continual email/phone/conversation with people about how bad the weather is up there, a vast 8 miles away. I would try to defend my homeland but end up looking stupid because I was leaning on a snow shovel, dressed in fishing waders, explaining how it was blue skies all around, flood?? What flood?  However, I am soothed by the fact that even if I am fabricating some minor details about our mild winters in Lake Stevens, apparently all the murders, car jacking, house arsons, and drug deals happen in Silverdale Wa. I don’t know where that is, but I will take the weather bad-luck any day over living in that wicked town. Just read KOMO news for details.

While I love the thought of warm winter stews, cats sleeping in the flickering glow of a log fire, and holidays with friends and family – in reality my mind immediately goes to the frozen pipes, hauling buckets, too few stalls for far too many horses, horses slipping on the ice, my damn dogs rolling in rotting salmon carcasses and snow sliding off roofs which appears to instantly erode ulcers in horse stomachs. Inevitably, there is a steady stream of people wanting to be winter boarders here at Polestar, because they too are having their own anxious hallucinations of horse in winter at small farm. I love to make people happy….. but somehow I also need to say NO to some people because I just don’t have any more room. Which does not make them happy.

Sometime around January, my fears about finding a frozen fish butt in Ruben’s tail as he wags his happy self in our kitchen will be replaced with dreams of going to California to an event. That is a milestone concept, because that means that I have either successfully made it through the worst of the weather struggles and can see spring ahead, or I have reached an apathetic state where I just don’t care about anybody but myself as I thrown the tank tops and shorts into my bag and run out the driveway screaming. Either way, there is always an end in sight to winter. In the meantime, I am enjoying the mushroom season and eating our way through our forest. The garden is finally slowing down it’s fall bonanza growth, honey is on the shelf, and the half cow is in the freezer. Im going to go visit my friend in Virginia and Mark is planning a road trip to family soon. Winter is not so scary today.