Posts Tagged ‘snow’
Stepping Between
When making my way through the swampiest areas of the paddocks, the trick I employ is to choose my steps between the potholes of hoof divots. Where the horse hooves have pushed up gashes of earth, I push the mess back down. When I allow myself to be distracted by the scoopful of manure I’m carrying, a misstep into a water-filled divot delivers an immediate signal from the wetness in my sock up to my brain, reminding me that these boots leak.
We weren’t expecting to wake up to another fresh blanket of snow yesterday morning. It was mostly harmless because there wasn’t that much and it didn’t require any shoveling. By the end of the day, it had all melted, leaving behind just enough moisture to keep things messy for another day or two.
Sunshine is coming. That should brighten everyone’s moods. Maybe kick the grass blades into gear. That would make the horses happy, I suspect. They do an impressive job of finding every spot within the confines of the board-fenced paddocks where new grass is sprouting.
It’s too bad they can’t figure out a way to walk around that doesn’t obliterate the turf that they would love to eat.
In my meanderings around the paddock, I marveled over the difference between places where it appears they must step gently and the surface packs down versus the damage they churn up when stepping with urgency.
At feeding times lately, Mix has been getting worked up in anticipation and for some reason takes it out by harassing Light and Mia. Yesterday she kept chasing them into muddy areas I’m sure they would otherwise choose to avoid. That kicks up an unnecessary mess.
Swings came over and gave Mix a piece of her mind, as if to get her to leave the other two alone. That works as long as Swings stays around. When she moves back to her feeding spot on the other side, Mix ramps her antagonism back up again.
Light and Mia seem to take it in stride, albeit with muddier hooves. As soon as buckets of feed get distributed, everybody calms down and tends to their meal.
That’s when I make my rounds, doing my best to step between all their many divots.
.
.
Changing Skies
It’s been a wild few days of changing skies around here lately. That is rather typical of the kind of weather March would usually bring.
The flakes that fell yesterday were HUGE! The difference from March storms of old is that it stopped snowing before burying us in barely a half of an inch.
At least the wind had stopped blowing. The calm was wonderful.
Only one additional tree toppled over to a 45-degree angle overnight. Maybe an 8 to 10-inch diameter trunk. A scattering of large branches came down, too. When Cyndie returns at the end of the week, I will be able to crank up the chainsaw to do some cleanup lumberjacking on trail seven. [grunt, grunt]
.
.
It Snowed!
Around the time we headed out to feed the horses in the late afternoon yesterday, it was beginning to drizzle. By the time we finished, the precipitation was changing over to sleet. After our dinner, snow was beginning to collect on the ground.
When Cyndie took Asher outside for one last pee, she said the snow was pelting them and it was very sticky underfoot.
I turned on the barn camera to check the view:
Those flakes were falling straight down.
A couple of hours later, the snow was floating around a little more:
At bedtime last night, there was already about an inch piling up on the deck railings. From the way the radar looked at that time, I’m expecting we will have received the upper end of the predicted 3 to 4 inches by this morning.
It was even snowing up in Hayward, where we will be this weekend. Another week after that, the annual American Birkebeiner ski race will happen. It has been significantly modified in length and route due to the snowless winter.
It’s not like a real winter but with any instances of accumulating snowfall, it sort of rhymes with winter for a short time.
.
.
Snowless Sadness
Being a snow lover during a snowless winter is a daunting burden for a sagging spirit. Seeking solace where I knew I could easily find it, I meandered my way through some of my photos from different winters now past. Ahh, those were the days…
They just don’t make ‘em like they used to.
There is always a chance we might experience a blast of snow between now and May. I will appreciate that when and if it happens, but I’m afraid anything yet to come will be too little, too late. For the people who try to earn a living wage by plowing snow for people, selling snow-related recreational equipment, or housing and feeding vacationers who engage in winter sports, the lack of snow is a complete disaster.
I’m just finding it deeply saddening in a multitude of ways.
.
.
Just Enough
We got just enough snow overnight to justify using the Grizzly to plow. It’s hard to tell how much snow fell out of the sky because it was/is windy and some areas are blown free of snow (like the deck railing which is usually a good gauge) and some drifted deeper than what truly fell.
Horses have blankets on in advance of the polar plunge as temperatures are predicted to plummet for the next few days.
This feels a little more like winter for our region. Almost the middle of January and the first driveway plowing of the season. Can’t complain about not being ready, I guess.
Bring on the NFL playoff games and a warm fire in the fireplace. (Glad I’m not playing football outside tonight in these conditions.)
.
.
Didn’t Happen
We somehow got missed by the passing snowstorm overnight Monday. Looking at the radar map from the comfort of our bed had me suspecting we were getting a fair dose of flakes. I figured there would be some shoveling to do at the very least when we headed out to feed the horses.
Much to my surprise, the number of flakes on our front steps was so paltry, there was open space between each one. It was like a cloud had sneezed and that’s all there was to show for it.
That’s okay. With no real foundation amount of snow this year, an occasional few inches ends up being more of a nuisance than anything fun. Plus, since snow didn’t happen, it gave me more time to prepare the ATV for eventual plowing. In my post yesterday, I mentioned that the electric lawn tractor was blocking the ATV and wouldn’t move due to some fault revealed by an error code. I couldn’t even get the drive wheels to release by the manual override that would allow me to simply muscle it out of the way.
Well, a second try proved to be the charm. I’m not aware of having done anything different, but when I tried again to pull the two levers that stretch a spring disengaging each drive wheel yesterday, it worked on my first try. I pushed the lawn tractor out of the way and drove the ATV out.
That success allowed me to hook up the trailer and finish hauling away all the branches I’ve trimmed off in the last month. The north loop pine tree project is officially completed for the season.
And, the ATV is now front and center in the shop garage.
You can see by the photo I took yesterday how much snow cover we have after receiving virtually none from the storm that passed just to our southeast. Weather forecasters suggest a plowable amount of snow is on the way for Friday.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
.
.
Different Shadows
Walking with Asher yesterday I spotted interesting shadows where the overnight snow didn’t land.
Do you think maybe it was a calm night? Yeah. Me too.
Later, coming out of the barn, I looked back at Cyndie and pointed out a bit of a shadow on her jacket from when she gave Mia a dose of medicine from a syringe.
No barn pigeons were involved, despite how it looks.
The full story starts from the night before when we were riled up over Mia’s pain and suffering. In Cyndie’s defense, she has only recently been getting back into outdoor activities and had no intention of spending more than a minute looking at the horses when Mia fell ill with that choke.
Cold, and walking painfully in her winter boot before her incisions have fully healed, Cyndie ended up making multiple treks back and forth between the house and barn. She came down with a syringe filled with a recommended dose of a pain med for Mia and suffered an epic failure to deliver.
Cyndie slid the syringe into Mia’s lips and pushed the plunger to deliver but the tip wasn’t in Mia’s mouth it was against her lip. The fluid of medicine sprayed straight back, covering Cyndie’s jacket, face, glasses, and hat. It was hard not to laugh but her frustrated cursing indicated it wouldn’t be considered laughable until much later.
The good news was that it helped Cyndie decide she had mixed the powder with too much water. She hiked back up to the house to prepare a fresh dose and ultimately delivered that batch like a pro who does this all the time.
Yesterday, Cyndie washed her jacket before heading down to help me with the afternoon feeding. Mia received most of this dose from the syringe but the fresh-out-of-the-dryer coat still took a hit.
I think that’s what a barn coat is supposed to look like, but we don’t always share the same standard.
Mia continues to improve. Yesterday morning we heard one occasion of just two coughs from her but by the afternoon we heard no coughing at all. She looked to be in good spirits and eating well.
We have the herd divided into two pairs: Swings with Mix and Light with Mia. After Monday night’s snowfall, I found evidence yesterday morning that Swings and Mix had walked all the way around through the hay field into the back pasture to approach the backside of the large paddock where Mia and Light were confined without food for the night.
The four of them were hanging out together on either side of the wooden paddock fence. Their hoof prints in the snow provided a shadow of their companionable activity from the night before.
.
.
Solar Warming
It’s official. The growing season for 2023 ended for us yesterday with temperatures dipping well below freezing overnight Sunday into Monday. The moon still looked plenty full and the cloudless sky made it appear as if a giant floodlight was illuminating everything.
That clear sky remained as the sun showed up over the horizon in the morning. When the horses had finished gobbling up all the feed in their pans, I noticed all four of them assumed the classic position of standing perpendicular to the warming rays of the sun.
They closed their eyes and got very quiet, waiting patiently while absorbing every morsel of solar energy coming their way.
The air was calm, the horses were calm, and I couldn’t resist pausing for a while to stand with them and enjoy the serenity.
Suddenly, the blessing of having nowhere else I needed to be seemed doubly rewarding.
I can tell you this: it sure felt a lot warmer than what the thermometer was indicating at the time, and a lot different than what it is like this morning after snow blew in overnight last night.
Is this a Halloween trick?
.
.
Not Fooled
April. Really?
Fool me once…
I thought I was going to shovel snow. APRIL FOOLS!
It was more like cement. Maybe stucco. Plaster?
Just to add to the ruse, nature makes it look gorgeous.
I fear this mess will be un-plowable. How fast will it melt? I’m going to clean up around the edges and see how conditions change after the sun shines on it for an hour or two.
I don’t think the horses see much humor in this kind of practical joke. Our trees don’t think it’s very funny, either.
My new zero-turn mower is due to arrive on Tuesday.
Happy April everyone!
.
.
Nests Removed
After a long delay in my attention to the project of mounting our surveillance camera, I dug back into it yesterday. That digging uncovered the presence of six old hornet nests and one large bird’s nest, none of which I realized existed under the shop entrance roof.
One of the primary things slowing me down in committing to this installation has been the issue of how I would get power to the camera. I decided to pull down the light fixture to gain access to the AC wiring. Deep inside the cover of that light fixture was where one of those wasp nests I didn’t know about was hidden.
I’m happy to be dealing with these nests in the winter when no wasps are present.
Some shopping for supplies will need to happen so I can add an outdoor outlet to the circuit of the light fixture. I will take this opportunity to also add a switch for that outdoor light fixture up over the door to the shop. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why that light never came on. Then I discovered it was directly wired to a circuit breaker that was in the “off” position. There was no switch. Oops.
As I was putting the ladder away after returning from feeding the horses, I noticed the ice mound under the eave in front of the garage was soft enough that I could break it up and finally remove it. One thing led to another and I decided to also shovel the soft snow from the giant mound that remained on the pavement. It would be good to open up that space for plowing the new snow predicted to fall in the next few days.
Shoveling that enormous pile of snow proved to be a bigger task than I should have tried to muscle my way through. I felt a pang in my ribs as I tossed one too many heavy shovel-full and that put an end to moving any more snow. I’m hoping that by stopping right away, the damage will be mild and not infringe on my ability to shovel when this next storm hits.
Today might end up being a day of more desk work than physical activity. It’s not like I needed an excuse to work on our tax returns or anything.
.
.
Relative Something 