The Winter that never came

We're getting close to the middle of winter here and it has not brought any relief. We have not recieved any rain as of early 2013. From 2012-2013 we received about 3 inches of rain and we have not received any since then. Our town does not even have a rain chart as there is none to report. But in other news... Our first sheep of the season has made it onto the homestead. It was born on the 20th of January by Sheepie #1. Darth Sheep sheepie is looking HUGE and we'll see what she ends up with. I was finally able to clean out the front yard: pruned the grapes and got them ready to propagate, pruned the apple tree, cleaned out the boysenberries, watered the garlic, and got things ready for the almond tree pruning. Added some more trees to our list: Italian prune (to make up for the one that Anush killed), Smyrna Quince, Russian Quince, Arkansas Black Spur Apple, Hudson's Golden Gem, Seckle Pear, Warren Pear, Chicago Fig, Another fig that starts with a K, Royal Medler, Rainer Cherry, Bing Cherry, Candada Apricot, Harcot Apricot, Anna Apple, and some more I'm probably forgetting. Now we've really, really hit our tree limit and we'll see if they all live and grow well. We'll have to keep watering them as the sky and weather do not seem to want to work with us. My goal is the have fresh fruit from March until December with dried/jam/preserved fruit for the rest of the time that we do not have fresh fruit available. The only trees left to prune are the Ranger peach and the Almond out front. After that we'll hopefully be winterized and be ready to bring on the Spring. We have the old potato quadrant that is ready to be planted with other veg and the south-eastern quadrant ready to be planted with our future potatoes. We'll have to till it soon to see if we could start our plants. We're in the middle of constructing our Poultry Palace/Chicken Palace and we're working on the roof at the moment. It should be done shortly so that our chickens can have something to lay their eggs in as well as a location for our ducks and geese to nest in. Since we tore down the old chicken coop we found ourselves with pieces of a metal garage door and other metal bits around the back yard. They were able to be moved off site this weekend thanks to a guy who picks up metal and appliances for free in our area. Now we just need to clear out the left over pieces of detritus and the back yard might be a bit more organized. It seems as though we're busy but slow all at the same time. Ivan makes everything last so much longer than it needs to be, but that' life. We're hoping to be able to get to more projects soon.