Archive for the ‘Wintervale Ranch’ Category
Still Digging
After taking the entire day off from shoveling or plowing on Sunday, I needed to pick up where we left off, and yesterday was another busy day of digging. I started the day up on our roof, to get the snow off our peak vent. It was so nice up there, I took a little extra time and cleared the valleys between the vaulted roof and the low roof on the west end of our house. 
Unfortunately, that snow all went down onto the backup generator and our deck, so I needed to shovel it one more time when I got back down on the ground.
Speaking of how nice it was up there, I noticed in the mirror last night that I got a bit of a sunburn on my ever-more-exposed forehead. I shouldn’t be surprised, after watching how quickly the solar power evaporated the snow to expose bare shingles in the spots where I removed the snow.
After a quick lunch, I headed for the diesel tractor to finish opening the full width of that last hill of our driveway where I got stuck on Saturday night. When that was accomplished, all that remained was the gravel sections around the hay shed and the barn.
It is frustrating, because the places where it would be easy to pile the snow are places where we don’t want the melt to drain directly into the paddock. To minimize that, I need to drive to the far end with the loader full of snow and dump it there, followed by an equal return trip. That’s not doing much for saving time or fuel. I feel like it takes me twice as long as it should to clear snow with that tractor.
It is also a challenge for my perfectionism. I need to really practice accepting a point that is good enough when it comes to clearing snow with that tractor. That would probably speed things up a bit for me.
As I think I mentioned, this winter storm was a real bugger for the amount of time it rained on us prior to changing over to accumulating snow. Every scoop with a shovel meets a base layer that sort of gives, but mostly resists, as a result of that rain. It also has caused a lot of the trees to continue to be burdened by the clinging snow and ice, despite the amount of wind that followed the next day.
The snow seems to cling to everything, sometimes to comical effect. The little peak of this bird feeder continues to sport a big tower of snow that sticks together and hangs on.
I wish I could say that I was done digging snow, but I’m not. I didn’t get the tractor around the back side of the barn yet. We already hand shoveled a small path from the back door to the manure pile, and there is nothing else we need that road opened for immediately. We just want to be sure to get it done before we get any more snow.
Just when I thought I was done for the day, I spotted that we hadn’t opened a path to Delilah’s kennel, and the roof of her kennel was drooping under the heavy load. I finished that chore and called it a day, even though that left my trail to the wood shed still needing to be dug out.
Maybe I’ll get around to that on the day I decide to go down and try to recover the path of the labyrinth. At least I don’t need to dig that. I’ll just walk it with my snowshoes, although it will be rather strange to now be over a foot above the ground while walking it.
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So Many
We have collected an awful lot of pictures over the last few days. Everywhere we look there are captivating views. The photos our cameras are able to record hardly do justice, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. Here are a select few (as always, you can click the image for a larger view)…
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Epic Battle
I fought long and hard against the snow that filled our driveway yesterday, and only just barely broke through in the end with a path that will allow us out in an emergency. That limited progress is despite the fact that I ended up getting help from two different neighbors!
I spent the morning clearing the upper portion of our driveway between the shop garage and the house. I was experimenting with different ways to scoop a bucket full and dump it to the side. It gets to be quite a trick when you are in the narrow lane of the driveway, away from open access points like the opening in front of the shop garage. At first it seemed rather easy, but it quickly became difficult when restrained by the edges of the driveway.
If I venture too far to the side, one of the front wheels will drop down off the pavement and then my rear tires just spin in place, chains and all, trying to pull back out. Then I need to rotate the bucket fully back, and lower it to the ground to use as a lever to push the tractor backwards, by rotating the bucket forward, out and away from me. That works most of the time, but it is an inexact science in the hands of a novice.
I wrestled with trying to figure out when speed was an advantage, mostly discovering when it was not. I struggled to figure out where the balance point was for a bucket filled to overflowing with snow, hoping to use the weight to my advantage, not against, in getting enough traction on the icy surface.
After a lunch break, I headed out to try my techniques on the rest of the driveway. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the driveway that remained to be cleared was far from flat. On the hills, I can usually move forward going down, but the going up part becomes an epic battle of spinning wheels. My progress was painfully slow. As big a scoop as I was using, and as full as I could possibly get it each time, it still felt like trying to shovel using a dinner spoon.
I tried speeding up, but then I sacrificed torque and would find myself getting stuck on the ice more often. After way too many iterations of back and forth, fatigue becomes a factor. My left foot and leg get tired working the clutch. One time, I forgot to shift into reverse, and accidentally went forward when I didn’t mean to, dropping my front wheel over the edge and forcing the dreaded levering the loader to push myself out.
I kept at it with barely a pause for a drink of water, and crested the last hill as the sun was setting. To my surprise, I discovered that one of my neighbors had plowed our driveway from the road, half way up the first hill. I was so thrilled at that I lost track of the bucket full of snow, leaving my hand on the lever so it lifted to the point of dumping part of its load back on the hood of the tractor and me.
With the difficult part down by the road already taken care of, I suddenly felt inspired to try to get the remaining section done before quitting for the day. Too bad it was some of the deepest snow yet and I was now headed downhill, making it increasingly difficult to back up with a bucketful of snow. Within sight of the finish line, I got myself miserably stuck. That is when my other neighbor showed up with his tractor and began digging toward me from the downhill side, while I practiced my loader-lever maneuvers to push myself back uphill. After a few scoopfuls by him, I was able to bomb my way forward and break through.
It was finally dark, and I was more than ready to be done for one day, so I left just a single narrow opening on that slope and made my way back to the garage. The final cleanup remains, either for today, or tomorrow, depending on when I feel up for the fight. This is more snow than I have ever tried to move in my entire life.
If this kind of storm happens again, I’m gonna be looking for one of those snow machines with tracks that the ski hills use. Either that or I need to look into flattening the driveway by cutting down the hills and filling in the valleys.
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Vet Visited
Before our thoughts became totally consumed with this latest blast of a winter storm –which has drifted snow across the 4 foot banks of our driveway, filling it completely– we received a visit from our veterinarian for a well-check of our horses.
It was Thursday, and Cyndie and I had both stayed home from work in the face of the posted winter storm warning. We had cleaned up the stalls in the barn, and moved the horses inside out of the rain that was falling in prelude to the snow.
We weren’t entirely surprised to receive a phone call from the vet’s office checking to see if we wanted to reschedule. We weren’t the ones doing the driving, so we definitely wanted this appointment to happen, if the vet didn’t mind navigating the icy roads.
Cyndie headed down to our barns at the appointed time, to find the vet already inside, making her own introductions to our 4 horses. She really loved “our gray,” Legacy, saying he was “cute.” 
As the rain began to change over to snow, the vet stepped into each stall to listen to heart beats and lung sounds, feel their teeth, and do an overall survey of their condition.
The horses had blood samples drawn, and received a vaccination shot and dose of deworming paste. There were two valuable things we learned. First, we can begin to cut back on their feed rations. With the cold temperatures we have been facing this winter, we have been making sure they were well fed. The vet said our horses are not overweight, but we don’t want them to get any bigger. We can change the feed we are giving them to one that provides just essentials and nothing more.
She instructed us to be very careful about the transition back to grazing fresh grass. We cannot allow them uncontrolled access to the fields. They need to be restricted to the sacrifice area of our paddocks, with brief, but increasing visits to the grass.
The second thing the vet discovered is that the latest bale of hay we have been serving has too much foxtail grass in it. The awn, that stiff bristle at the top of the stem, can become embedded in their cheeks and tongue and create ulcers. Three of our horses showed some signs of sensitivity or ulcerations in their mouths.
We invited her to look at our remaining bales to give us her opinion of what we have on hand. From her review, we think it will be okay to just work around the worst bale and pick and mix from the remaining two batches of bales we have.
Next fall we will make another appointment to have the vet “float their teeth,” which is what they call it when they file down any sharp points that develop. With that, her visit was done and she drove off into the wicked weather. We are relieved to know our horses are doing well and that the two things deserving attention are well within our ability to manage.
That is a really good thing right now, because it allows our attention to get back to being all-consumed by the tonnage of snow that remains to be removed from our driveway and barn paths today. Yesterday I heard Cyndie wondering out loud about seeing if George Walker might want to bring his Belgian draft horses over to teach us how to drive the team while clearing snow with them. That’s not such a bad idea, because the way “horse power” is measured, he has a lot more in his team of horses than I have with my 44hp Ford New Holland 3415 tractor.
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Wicked Winter
Photo taken by Cyndie Hays
This is one for the record books, I tell ya. I’m a big fan of winter, but this one may have exceeded my capacity to cope. We went for a little walk late last night to check out the drama, and I couldn’t really enjoy it. It looked too much like last May when we received 18 inches of snow overnight and suffered a huge amount of damage to our trees.
It is heavy and sticky and will be a real challenge to clear our driveway and pathways.
Before I came in, I decided to try to shovel the front steps and sidewalk. That provides a reference so I can see how much more snow fell overnight, and it will make today’s effort to clear it that much easier.
It was a bear. VERY sticky. We had a few hours of rain yesterday morning, before it turned to snow, so it is soft underneath, but then freezes quickly when it gets exposed. Just an all around treat to shovel and plow.
While I was out there, somewhere beyond the reach of our porch light, in the woods to the north of our property line, a large tree cracked and crashed to the ground. Maybe it was just because I was there to hear it, but it sure made a very loud sound.
Before our little walk, the electricity toggled off and on a couple of times while we were watching a movie, which again reminded me of that storm last spring. One significant difference between that storm last year and this one, though, is that last year’s happened so late in the season, it was logical to expect it would be the absolute last one of the year. This year…? It scares me to imagine what we have ahead of us for what remains of the wicked winter of 2013-2014.
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Novel Approach
Almost every time we experience a significant snowfall, the snow thrown up by the plow clearing our road knocks our mailbox off its post. Luckily, our mailbox is made of molded plastic, and can be remounted with moderate effort, but the plastic is getting damaged a bit each time. Also, it is annoying to be forced to fix it after every storm.
I’ve been pondering coming up with some way to shield the mailbox from a direct blow by deflecting the snow that rolls off the plow blade as the truck races past. One idea was to make a decorative arching arbor over the mailbox. Another was to create some variation of a cone shape that I could mount on a post beside the mailbox so the blast of snow from the plow would be deflected around the wide, flat surface area of the mailbox. Both of these solutions would best be fabricated during any time of the year that is not winter. Since the problem of snow storms will be around for a while yet this year, I’ve been hoping to come up with something I could try immediately.
I decided to try making a deflector out of snow last night. When the sun dropped below the horizon, I figured I better get some pictures of the progress up to that point, while there was still enough light to see it, but these shots were taken before I finished it with a wider top to cover the exposed ends of the mailbox.
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My hope is that it will freeze solid enough before the first test that it doesn’t just collapse and add mass to snow that rolls off the blade into the side of our mailbox as the truck cruises by.
I won’t have long to wait. The storm warning we are under today is for 8-12 inches of snow, followed by heavy winds. The threat is significant enough that the Governor of Wisconsin has declared a state of emergency! That’s enough to keep Cyndie and me home from our workplaces and off the roads for the day, where we’ll be saving our energy for yet another session of plowing and shoveling to come. …And trying to figure out where we are going to put it all!
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Too Much?
Aaah winter. We enjoyed a little thaw yesterday. It inspired me to try to scrape the driveway up by the house. No good deed goes unpunished. The cable that lifts the plow blade on the Grizzly broke. But I’m not complaining. It was a wonderfully warm day for fixing that kind of problem.
I’m very happy to report that the roof of my wood shed is working just the way I hoped. The snow slides off and sunlight shines through.
I haven’t made it down to the labyrinth since the last 3 accumulations of snow, and I think it is going to be difficult to make out the path now.
Complicating that further, the prediction from my favorite weather blog says: “Winter resumes with a vengeance Thursday as the next winter storm smacks eastern Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin.”
Another weather site forecast shows an 80% chance of 3-5″ of heavy, wet snow combined with strong wind. Oh joy. It is a good thing I like winter, but we all know that it is possible to get too much of a good thing.
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Spectacular Sight
Yesterday afternoon, Cyndie arrived home from her travels, and in short order amazing things were happening with our horses. After surviving all of Delilah’s exhilarated energy when she walked in the door, Cyndie said hello to the cats and then it was time to check on the horses.
We made an on-the-spot decision to take the horses, one at a time, for a little walk outside the paddocks. It wasn’t anything significant, just a walk for a short distance on the driveway. She offered the first opportunity to Legacy, but when he played hard to get, Hunter won the honor. Of course, that did get Legacy’s attention and he was more than cooperative about the chance to go second.
As always, the horses that are left behind put on quite a show of anxiety about a member of the herd being outside the fence, calling out with a neigh and running along the fence line. I think the horse that is out on the walk likes the attention coming from the rest of them. Cyndie said they were loving the freedom.
After Legacy’s walk, Cayenne stepped up to the halter Cyndie was offering. It was tricky getting her out through the gate alone, as both Legacy and Hunter suddenly showed extreme interest in getting back outside along with her, and they weren’t listening to commands of opposition. Cyndie succeeded in managing the three horses and one gate, and got it closed with Cayenne alone with us on the outside.
Cayenne was so attentive and present with Cyndie that we decided to reward her with a stroll farther up the driveway than we had gone with Hunter and Legacy. That really got the other three riled up and they burst out of the paddock through the gate we leave open to the big field. They haven’t been out in the big field much lately, because the snow has gotten pretty deep out there. The new incentive of their drive to follow us on the walk overrode any previous hesitations they had about the snow, and suddenly we were watching the mystical sight of 3 energized Arabian horses running together, almost in synchronization, at top speed uphill through the deep, undisturbed snow. It was electrifying.
It was a most spectacular and rewarding thing to witness. They really put on a majestic display of their power and beauty for us. I had never seen these horses work that hard before.
When Cyndie brought Cayenne back inside the paddock, the other horses were again crowding the gate area. As Cyndie was wrestling to get the halter off over Cayenne’s ears, it appeared that Legacy nipped at Cayenne, an unfair gesture as she was in a somewhat defenseless position at that point. Cyndie appreciated Cayenne’s discipline to maintain composure in the situation, granting Cyndie priority and allowing her to safely complete the removal of the harness.
As we set out their afternoon feed, Legacy came up for his, still breathing hard after the exciting run in the snowy field. I think Cyndie’s return probably made quite an impression on them yesterday.
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Different Cat
When we first saw Mozyr at the feline adoption center, he was demonstrating some amazing athleticism and intelligence in his play. He also gave me the impression he had good confidence in himself. That all seemed to change when we got him home. His preferred spot for a long while was as far under our bed as he could get, up against the wall. Meanwhile, Pequenita, who is half his size, proved to be as bold as he was shy.
For all I know, she contributed to his apparent loss of confidence. There was a brief spell when she seemed to take control of him, banishing him from the bedroom altogether. At the same time, he would bully her off the food, so it seemed like there was an exchange of the dominance roles going on.
He was skittish about receiving affection, and resisted being picked up. He behaved very shy around visiting family and friends. I found myself referring to him as being a chicken, and had begun to think he was just going to be a distant cat that tolerates people as a necessary evil in order to get fed morning and night and have his litter box cleaned.
After a long period of these behavior patterns, he surprised me with a change, suddenly deciding to show up in the bathroom during my evening routines. He would often jump up beside the sink to check out what I was up to, and several times he even laid down right in the sink I was trying to use. He seemed to be indicating that I was his choice for a buddy, but it stayed entirely on his terms. If I tried to pick him up, or give him attention at a time of my choosing, I got rebuffed.
That all went away these last few months, when he seemed to get out of sorts around the time we had company, and then throughout a couple of his recent illnesses. He gave us a scare last Wednesday, when he appeared to be really sick. A quick online search turned up several instances where his symptoms were listed as having potential to be serious, but also could be something simple that a cat can get over in a day. We are lucky that it appears to have been the latter.
We made it very clear that we were trying to help him, and he seemed to respond overnight. He continues to seem better everyday and not only is more like his old self, he is that and beyond. He is a changed cat, as if this illness did something to him. I’ve never had him sit in my lap before.
Yesterday, as I was reading on our couch (and Delilah was outside in her kennel), Mozyr showed up –that in itself being a rare occurrence lately– and proceeded to lay on the book in my lap –an unprecedented occurrence! These last two days, he has met my gestures of attention with greater acceptance than he has ever shown before. I pulled the book out from under him and continued to read. He laid in my lap so long that I decided I should get a picture.
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Never assume your pets won’t change their behavior toward you, especially if you base that assumption simply on how they have behaved with you for the year prior.
Change happens.
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Relative Something 