Except for a chunk of January, now being called “the two-week winter” it has been a very warm winter here in Iowa, as well as around much of the country, with late February seeing a couple of days hitting the low 70s.

Now that it is March this winter season is officially the warmest one on record for Iowa, and this abnormally warm weather continues.

Shelly spotted two opossum close to the garage while walking to the house. She was able to keep our dog Steve from them, as we have decided they must be eating the mice around the acreage, and so we want to keep them around. We still have had no mice in the house or garage this winter, which is a first since we have lived here.

Some birds are finally back; our first robins were spotted on the acreage February 25, right around the time we saw the first flies this year. Even though winter took it easy on many of us this season we are greatly anticipating the glorious sights and smells of spring.

Since my last Acreage Update posted January 10^th we here in Iowa have experienced light snow, a “snow squall”, blizzards, frigid cold, heavy snow, wind gusts of 35 to 45 mph, whiteouts, drifting snow, road and school closures and an Arctic air mass. When it finally began to warm up we had a dense fog advisory every day until the end of January. Now we are experiencing some record high temperatures, with highs from the 40s into the low 60s. So far it looks like it really is a leap year, skipping over February into March. In some places it has been reported flowers are blooming! Some are predicting we will get “payback” for our current nice weather. That could be, but I am thinking we have prepaid for it with that horrible January. And we have Phil on our side, having predicted an early spring this year.

I saw a cat prowling around the acreage recently but I think it has moved on as I see no scat or tracks. However, we still have no mice in the garage or house. And I filled up all the bird feeders before the crazy winter weather hit, and they are still full. Strange…something different is going on this season.

At the end of last year we received an oil and gas lease offer from an Oklahoma company for our acreage, which is part of a 640 acre area where they want to drill. We have zero experience with this kind of thing, so we will check with our neighbors first to find out what they think about the issue.

One night recently I let our dog, Steve, outside and there was a opossum scrounging around the outside of the garage. Steve immediately went after the animal and it dropped into a ball before Steve even got to it. He picked it up in his mouth a couple of times, and I heard some cracking sounds, but let the opossum drop on the sidewalk each time after a few seconds. The playing dead worked and Steve lost all interest in it and wandered off to explore his yard. That left it to me to finish off the wounded animal.

We just experienced our first winter storm of the season. As usual people were worried about what might happen, stirred up by the forecasters. We received around 5 inches of snow, with some wide drifts whipped up by the wind. Down south of us, in lower Iowa, areas received 10 to 12 inches. Of course, by the end of winter we are not so much worried by the snow storms but sick of them and ready for spring. Another one is blowing through starting tomorrow.