This is a picture of our drive to Holiday Market on Saturday morning. It snowed for most of the day on Friday. On Friday afternoon I asked Jeff what he thought about taking a trip to the post office (about three miles away) so we could mail out some orders (and not have to worry about mailing them out on Saturday morning.) He was unsure about the roads, but we decided to go. The drive was a little nerve wracking and we slid a few times. We barely made it up our driveway on the way back up. Jeff went and shoveled parts of the driveway to make it better for the next morning, even though he wasn’t feeling completely better yet. We figured that the next day’s drive would be better because we would be driving on a main highway. It wasn’t. Saturday morning we were surprised to see the highway had not been cleared nearly as much as we were expecting. Our typically one hour drive turned into a two hour drive. Jeff is a really good driver and I feel safer riding with him than with anyone. He drove slow. Luckily, we had left early just in case.

 We thought ‘well, surely the roads will be better once we get to town.’ They weren’t. Someone told us that there are only 12 plows for the whole city of Eugene. We were surprised, even the main roads weren’t clear. I didn’t think that driving in the snow was a big deal, I grew up in Iowa after all. You drive in the snow all winter long because there is snow all winter long. But in Iowa the plows are constantly clearing the roads and people are prepared for snow. I remember living in Portland and being amazed that everything shut down when it snowed there. Schools canceled, businesses closed. Coming from the snowy Midwest, I thought it was kind of funny. In western Oregon it’s a whole different story when it snows. 

We finally got to the Holiday Market and got our things set up in our booth. Quite a few vendors and food booths didn’t show up. There were a lot less people than usual that day. We were asking about weather forecasts and trying to figure out a plan of action for that night. Many generous friends invited us to stay with them in town for the night, but we didn’t want to leave our chickens for long. (It’s a good thing we didn’t. The nice warm water Jeff had for them in their coop was completely frozen when we got home.) We didn’t want to get stuck away from home if the roads were going to get worse. All the cars were driving on the snow and packing it down. We were afraid the roads would turn to ice. At one point in the day I thought, ‘I better trust my intuition on this one’ and then wondered ‘what should we do?’ My feeling said: ‘Get home.’ Jeff had the same feeling. We decided to leave the market early that day, instead of the usual 6. We thought the roads might turn to ice when it got dark. The wonderful market staff was really understanding about it, they had been surprised we had even showed up that day. Bracken fell asleep in the car. Jeff had a strong feeling to make a stop before we left town and get chains on our tires. (We had looked into buying studded tires before, but they were out of our price range.)

 Bracken asleep in the back seat while they put the chains on our two front tires. 

We were told that the maximum speed you can drive when you have chains on your tires is 25 mph. So we drove 25 mph on the highway towards home. It took us forever to get back home. I had prayed Bracken would sleep the whole drive, but he woke up. He wasn’t happy to still be in the car and let us know it. It was the longest drive from Eugene we’ve ever had. And yes, there was ice. We never would have made it up our driveway (and possibly a few other spots) without those chains. I was so grateful Jeff had the thought to get chains on our tires. The next day, Sunday, we heard that the roads were worse. Another drive at 25 mph with even worse roads? Nope. We decided not to go to market that day. It was a huge relief not to worry about driving in those conditions. We spent the day working. And of course Bracken wanted to go outside and play in the snow.

 Showing me his treasures.

 He wanted to bring out his cardboard box again, only this time he filled it with his icicle collection. 

 The chickens looked out from their coop window, wondering about all that white stuff outside.

 Bracken and I went out in the garden, wondering if they would follow us out there. Our chicken, Daffodil, did follow us. She hung out on the edge of a wooden garden bed and didn’t want to walk in the snow.

 We didn’t gather eggs on Saturday night, so Sunday we happily gathered our eggs. The darkest brown egg is from our Wellsummer chickens. We love those dark colored eggs!

 Honey didn’t seem shy about the snow at all.

 The house.

 The woodshed.

 Snowy Buddha statue by the front pond.

 Little frozen pond (that Jeff built years ago.)

 Adding to his icicle collection. This one had little bits of rosemary in it.

I meant to write this post yesterday, but it didn’t happen. I’ll be skipping the YarnAlong this week, but that just means I’ll have more knitting goodness to share for next week. We went to the post office and the roads are getting clearer, thank goodness. The chains have been removed from our tires. It will be nice to have them on hand if we need them again, but we’re hoping we won’t have any use for them until Holiday Market is over! 

The snow sure is fun to play in though…