Pushing Snow
After a day of clearing more snow, it became glaringly obvious to me that not having to deal with much snowy weather for the last two years has left me way out of practice. Day two of the post-storm clean-up included some roof raking, deck shoveling, and hand shoveling the area in front of the shop garage, since I have yet to remedy the issues with the ATV plow setup.
Gladly, Cyndie came to my aid with the last bit of driveway shoveling, just as I was running on fumes. The killer for me is working the roof rake with my arms over my head, especially with one bum shoulder. It’s exhausterating, to coin a custom word.
It felt like a bit of an insult to receive a fresh dusting of flakes before we’d finished the driveway shoveling. I’d almost forgotten what it was like when snow and cold were the norm at this latitude.
It could snow a little almost every day, and people just get used to there being a coating of snow to navigate on foot or by car.
I really should fix up the plow situation today because there still remains plowing to be done down to the barn and around the hay shed. When I finish that, we can resume clearing out the hay shed of the rest of the bales of moldy hay.
When I clear significant snow this early in the season, it is important to push it well beyond the edges so there will be room for the next snowy event. I will need to accommodate wide turns around the hay shed because there is a delivery of fresh bales sometime in the near future. That means pushing snow well into the grass around the corners.
Seems pretty obvious what my priority for the day should be.
A shot of yesterday’s sunset…
…and the 3/4 moon reflecting the sunlight that was dropping below our horizon.
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Multiple Failures
Yesterday was a failure for me in two ways. My ill-conceived attempt to simplify the connection of the winch hook to the plow blade proved woefully insufficient. To distract me from that frustration, I turned on the Vikings football game and was faced with a profound embarrassment for the team and all of its fans.
It looked like we probably got around 5-6 inches of snow accumulation from Saturday’s storm. The ground isn’t frozen solid yet, and what little residual warmth still exists was making the base layer just sticky enough to be annoying. It stuck to the plow blade and to the shovels. It is such a draining tedium when half a shovel-full stays on the shovel after every attempt to toss it.
I have needed to plow so infrequently over the last two winters that I guess I’m out of practice. I forgot how much the nylon rope on my winch stretches as it gets repeatedly snugged with a constant back and forth from lifting and dropping the blade. The added weight of snow sticking to the blade exacerbated the issue.
The kicker that ultimately caused me to give up trying was that the mechanism to pull a pin back, allowing the blade to be angled, stopped working. I assumed it was frozen with packed ice and snow, so I parked the Grizzly back in the garage to be dealt with later.
That left me doing more hand shoveling than I would have liked, but I got enough done to receive our guests for brunch with the place looking satisfactorily welcoming.
Today, I will be giving the winch lift issue the time and attention it deserves to resolve it. I’m not sure if the problem with the pin for blade-angle adjustment was an isolated incident or something more concerning. The mechanism was used when we bought the ATV, and that was 13 winters ago. It won’t be a big shock if something’s just plum worn out.
Like any good glutton for punishment, I turned on the football game after our guests left. Ouch. Seriously, ouch. It was painful to witness. The one positive I can take from the spectacle of the offense’s epic ineffectiveness is that I have no reason to look for entertainment in watching them play for the rest of the season.
I’d rather settle into my favorite recliner and finish some of the books that I’m currently juggling.
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Stinky Effort
While the flakes were falling yesterday, Cyndie and I spent some time in the hazardous environment of the moldy old bales in the hay shed, kicking up mold dust with each step of the clean-up effort. We had the help of Asher, who reveled in the chance to explore all the hidey-holes where small animals have sought shelter over the several years we’ve kept that base layer in place.
He is not usually allowed such unfettered access in there when it’s filled with bales of good hay. Of course, he knows full well that a cat was occupying the place recently, so I respect his keen interest.
We worked our way through about half of the old bales before calling it quits for the day.
We’ve used up all the nearby locations to stash the moldy old bales, with a lot of hay left to go. Cleaning up the hay shed isn’t that difficult. Figuring out where to dispose of the old hay is the hard part.
Quitting when we did gave me a chance to enjoy watching the UofM Gophers on TV as they beat Wisconsin in the falling snow for the last game of the football regular season at Minnesota’s home stadium.
Looks like I get my chance to do some plowing and shoveling this morning. We’ve got company coming for brunch, so I can’t lollygag around. I need to get a path cleared before they arrive.
Today’s events will give me an excuse to take a break from finishing the hay shed clean-up effort for a day. I will gladly inhale the clean air that yesterday’s flakes scrubbed as they fell, hoping to flush away the miserable stench of mold that still lingers in my nose.
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Snow Maybe
It’s close. We can see it on the weather radar. Our county is under a Winter Weather Advisory today as a snow system is slowly making its way across our region from west to east. It appears that the bulk of the impact will be to our south, which puts us in the “maybe” category regarding the amount of accumulated snow we will need to shovel or plow.
Just in case it piles up, I spent some time yesterday pulling the plow blade from the back of the garage and getting it mounted on the Grizzly.
It took ‘some time’ because the long arms of the mounting frame, combined with the weight and width of the blade, make it rather unwieldy to maneuver.
The real problem lies in the fact that I can almost move it sufficiently all on my own, so I am too often inclined to try. Yesterday’s effort bordered on ridiculous and held potential for several troublesome failures as I wrestled it around a variety of obstacles to get it to the front of the ATV. Ultimately, I accomplished it without incident.
Once there, I needed to envision a creative way to connect the hook and winch cable that lifts the blade, since the cobbled method from last winter proved to be ill-advised. I’m not confident that my latest iteration will be adequate, but it’s a start.
If history serves as a guide, I will be forced to revise the setup when it fails in the dark, when it is cold, and I am in the middle of a huge plowing effort. That’s always a great time to work on kludged solutions.
Since yesterday’s weather was a perfect calm before the storm type of day, I decided to move a fresh batch of bales from the hay shed to the barn. Upon opening the big door of the hay shed, the aroma of moldy hay was becoming too prominent to ignore.
Our several-year-old ploy of leaving old bales as a base layer on which we stack new hay needs a change. Cyndie swept down cobwebs while we contemplated the effort it will take to remove the nasty bales.
The first challenge will be that the twine will likely have degraded to a point of failure when we try to pick up the bales. The second challenge is where we will dispose of the moldy mass. I may or may not dabble in the project while beautiful flakes are floating down this afternoon.
Light was keeping an eye on the distant horizon between mouthfuls of her feed this morning. The insulating property of her winter growth is visible in the snow that doesn’t melt on her back.
She looks so gorgeous, it’s hard to fathom how skinny she was when rescued as a starving momma in a kill pen in Kansas years back. The tips of her mane look like she has them colored at some fancy salon.
These horses deserve to be fed the best hay we can find, and to keep it stored in a way that keeps it fresh until the last bottom bale is reached.
Cleaning the hay shed today will be a labor of love.
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Feeling Wintry
In case you were wondering what the most recent blast of winter weather was like for us on Tuesday and Wednesday, I present the following that it inspired me to create:
Recipe to make an otherwise beautiful event of falling snowflakes into an angry blast of epic proportions:
- One afternoon of misting rain
- A few hours of actual raindrops
- Cold but not freezing air temperatures
- A few hours of mixed precipitation of rain/sleet/snow
- One large blast of a below-freezing air mass
- A constant 25 mph gale out of the Northwest
- An infinite number of snowflakes of various shapes and sizes
Add the above ingredients in the order listed for the duration indicated. For greatest impact, extend the overall event for longer hours to increase the amount of angry blast desired. To add some *icing* to this cake, don’t allow the sun to be visible for weeks after the storm has passed.
I admit that I got a little carried away with the last line. Overstating the part about not being able to see the sun for weeks is just being rancorous. In reality, we enjoyed a decent mix of scattered sunshine yesterday afternoon. The angry blast of wintry weather turned out to be far short of epic.
We have removed blankets from the horses, and they are showing every indication of being perfectly adjusted to the arrival of the snow and cold.
I pulled out my winter boots and insulated Carhartt overalls to wear while the snow was flying in the gale-force winds, but I need to retrain myself on the intricacies of getting in and out of my winter “spacesuit.”
It’s safe to say that the switch has been flipped, taking us from the genteel conditions of a mild autumn into the harsh reality of winter in the north.
Different Profiles
As Asher was trotting up the driveway the other day, his shadow on the pavement looked like an interesting silhouette. I pulled out my phone and tried to snap a photo, needing to wait for good sunlight through the tree branches while also trying to keep up with him.
The challenge of keeping up with him is that he speeds up as soon as he notices someone closing in on him.
The first shot had him looking rather moose-like to me. At jogging speed, I didn’t get the shadow framed as well as I wanted.
This one didn’t line up so well, either, but it captures a little more of a truer profile of him. I particularly like that it caught one of his front paws in the motion of his scampering.
Yesterday, before the rain really started falling, I took a picture of Mia in her muddy rain slicker.
Since our rain overnight was predicted to turn into snow, I think the horses will understand this morning why we subjected them to the nuisance of blankets again. At least I didn’t find any evidence yesterday that they were rubbing the mud onto the newly braided bale twine we wrapped around the post on Monday.
Cold and wetness are never a good combination for the girls. It would seem most logical to stay beneath the overhang and munch on the hay we hang under there for them. For some reason, at least three of them can’t seem to resist the adventure of exposing themselves to the elements.
Swings is the one who most often demonstrates the ability to remain dry by staying under the roof. She is the oldest of the bunch. Maybe the additional years have produced a more informed intellect.
She be older, so she be wiser.
This would be a good time to be able to tune in to their telepathic frequency to find out what they are thinking. At the very least, I hope they recognize we want what is best for them. We wouldn’t subject them to the rain sheets if we weren’t concerned about their exposure to wet snow and rain when temperatures are cold.
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Adjustment Time
It looks like we have reached the point in our change of seasons where the temperature will drop below freezing and stay there for a while. We have had almost two full winters of temperatures frequently rising above freezing, and it’s reached the point where it’s become my expectation. I’m going to need to adjust my mindset and acclimatize my body for something closer to old-fashioned winters real quick.
When the temps stay below freezing day and night, lake ice finally gets a chance to become thick enough for skaters and ice fishing fans. The ground will begin to freeze, and without snow cover to provide insulation, it will freeze deeper and deeper into the dirt. Then, when we finally do get a decent snowfall, it won’t start melting from the bottom up.
It just might make me feel like a kid again.
Yesterday, I updated the braided bale twine we wrap around one of the posts supporting the barn overhang. Can you tell the difference between the old and the new in the photo?
The horses have proven they like to rub against it. Covering the wooden post protects the horses from getting splinters and keeps them from chewing on the wood. Finding this creative use for the twine cut from hay bales keeps the polypropylene out of the waste stream.
I decided to do the wrapping while the horses were being served their feed for the afternoon, but I started before the feed buckets were brought out. They showed a healthy curiosity about what I was up to. Light seemed to think the new braid I brought out was for them to chew on.
After Cyndie served up their buckets, she helped me with the exercise of going around and around in what felt like an endless number of circles to tightly stretch the braid on every corner.
Now the horses can rub against a wider span of the bumpy braid when the rain blankets we just put on them again become bothersome.
Rubbing against the posts is a much better option than against the hay nets that Mix was trying to use. The metal clips on the blanket were getting snagged in the netting while we were standing there, and unfortunately, they don’t rely on finesse to get themselves out of such situations.
Hopefully, the horses will adjust quickly enough to the cold temperatures that we can remove the blankets when the current bout of precipitation moves off to the east.
Accumulating snow can’t be far off in our future. It would be great if the next batch of precipitation coming our way wouldn’t start as rain.
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Basilica Luminisced
We kicked off the season of family events for the holidays with a pre-Thanksgiving night out last night for dinner in downtown Minneapolis at Crave restaurant before seeing a performance of LUMINISCENCE at The Basilica of Saint Mary on Hennepin Avenue.
What a spectacle! 360° 3D projection set to a recorded track of dialogue and music, interwoven with a live choral performance. The light show was ever-changing, but Cyndie captured some samples that show a little of the variety of impressions they are able to create.
There were seven of us in attendance, including our kids and Cyndie’s mom. Somehow, we navigated getting us all to the restaurant and then into and out of the Basilica with relative ease. That’s a little surprising since there was a second show after ours and people were coming in as we were trying to get out, both from the Basilica and in the parking lot.
We had a little help from Marie’s superpower of advanced age, using her handicapped parking permit and being allowed to use the handicap accessible entrance and elevator to get to the sanctuary.
Elysa and her cousin, Althea, had been out the night before to hear music at The Palace Theatre and turned to find Elysa’s cousin, Monty, from the Hays side of the family. Julian reported having attended a different music show on Friday night, and Althea said her brother, Trygve, had also attended the same show.
I won’t be surprised if I learn there were other family members at last night’s Basilica show that we didn’t know about. In three days, we’ll be with more of Cyndie’s side of the family for Thanksgiving.
It definitely feels like holiday family time is off to a good start for us this year.
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Granting Permission
During the nine days of the deer hunting season, the properties on either side of us become occupied by blaze-orange-clad individuals, and we adjust our travel patterns to avoid the edges of our woods. It becomes rare that we spot any deer wandering around.
When we first moved here, we quickly learned how important deer hunting is to the folks around us. The neighbor just to our south introduced himself to us by stating more than asking, “You’re not going to post your property ‘No Hunting’(.)?”
Our little subdivided plot was originally part of his family’s land, where he has hunted his entire life. We were okay with allowing him to continue his tradition and were interested in avoiding the awkward situation of dealing with the issue if we did object steadfastly.
I think he recognized right away that hunting was not something we were inclined toward, and he has always been respectful of that. One time, long ago, right before the season opened, he checked with us to confirm permission to cross into our woods if a deer that had been shot ran off. That was an easy request to grant.
He’s never checked again since, but long-term permission was implied, and only one time in 13 years have people from his collective of hunters needed to drive their 4-wheeler into our woods to retrieve a carcass. It’s been relatively quiet over the last five years, in terms of hunting activities around us.
Yesterday, while Cyndie was walking Asher down by the road, the neighbor stopped his pickup truck and asked her if he could hunt from within the edge of our woods. Cyndie said there was an awkward pause while she tried to figure out a response.
Our preference would be that we wouldn’t need to constrain our walks in the woods, but we do that anyway during the hunting season, so that doesn’t really make a difference. There is a small wish that our land could be a safe zone for deer to bed down to avoid hunters, but we own a dog that is always excited to make chase after wildlife, so it’s not ever really all that safe.
Cyndie said her response after the delay was a slow, uncertain vocalization of acceptance. It’s only nine days.
After the fact, I suggested she could have ditzily said yes right away, but add that she just didn’t want him to fire his rifle because the loud bang would upset the dog and horses from that close of a distance.
I almost got a deer yesterday evening while traveling over 60 mph on the way to a dinner party in the Cities. At that speed, I wasn’t going to be able to change the outcome, but the buck hesitated just enough at the last second so that our car raced past without impact. I could have reached out and touched him. It was nerve-rattling.
We are in his debt for granting us permission to pass before he continued his way across the road.
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Relative Something 