The new year has brought a full display of all the weather options for January in these parts. In the space of a week, we have gone from a foretaste of Spring back to Winter's ice and snow. The kids were delighted to have an extra day tacked on to Christmas vacation, as local schools thought twice about sending the buses out. Through all the changes, lambs have continued to arrive. I think I lost count somewhere around the twenty fifth. We lost two this week, killed by pneumonia as the weather cycled from balmy to frigid. When I walked up the driveway this evening after parking the truck at the bottom of the luge run that parts of the driveway have become, I could see Susan and one of the boys still in the barn, later than the usual evening feeding. Stopping in to see what kept them, I found that two of the Hampshires had lambed, the first from that part of the flock. Ebony, my black Hampshire Ewe, had two fine big lambs. Number twelve, herself a big ewe, had twins from our new stud ram, Prejudice. The buck lamb did them both proud, but his sister looks weak, and may not make it. Susan gave her a little extra from a bottle and from there we wait and hope for the best.

I tried to capture a little of the transformations brought by light, cloud and snow this last week with the digital camera. Here, as they might put it in the East, are three views of Hogback Mountain: