Comfort Food and A Long Drive

Matt's grandmother passed away last Thursday, so we drove out to Vernal for her funeral yesterday. Vernal, a Utah oilfield town next to Ashley National Forest, is our second home. Little Q was a trooper throughout the seven hours of driving and the graveside service in single-digit weather. Even though the purpose for our trip was sad, the drive to NorthEastern Utah is always a beautiful one. You don't have to drive too far to see an amazingly diverse landscape, even in winter. We drove past the ranch where we picked up our Navajo-Churros last summer on the way to the church for the funeral service.

After a nice week-long interlude of warm weather, we got snow on Sunday and freezing temps that immediately turned the snow to ice. On Monday night, it was so cold the milk was turning to slush in the stainless steel milking bucket while we were milking. There is a quiet consistency to milking cows that is calming in it's daily sameness, like starting and ending the day with meditation.

The clay froze in the pottery studio, and some mice have moved in and decided to chew on one of the platters I'd left in there to dry. It was too cold in the studio to throw over the weekend, so I switched to beadwork and worked on some full-beaded custom adult moccasins instead.

The sheep take the cold in stride - I suppose it helps having an eight inch wool coat. They prefer to sleep outside, laying in the falling snow, rather than hunkering down inside on warm straw like our cows do.

We had late-night comfort food after the long drive home last night - venison chili and Navajo fry bread, one of our self-sufficient winter favorites.