Posts Tagged ‘snow’
No Matter
No matter how much preparation I have done for the onset of the snow season, the first significant accumulation seems to always burst on the scene when I still have too much to do. This morning I discovered news of a likely accumulating snowfall anticipated for Monday. I better get after a few things, especially moving the rest of that fresh pile of split firewood into the shed.
I had hoped to get the round pen surface of lime screenings sufficiently packed so we could order dump truck loads of sand for the finishing touch. I was allowing time —as in, the passing of days— to aid in the settling. I also drove around in there on the 4-wheeler, pulled an arena drag across it, and re-raked it prior to a final packing with a tamper. I’m not confident I’ll get that done now, although it doesn’t matter so much if, with a new snow covering, we wouldn’t be able to get a truck in there to dump the sand anyway.
Suddenly, this weekend I need to:
- Move the pile of left-over pea gravel that came with the drain tile installation. I have several potential uses for the pea gravel. Just need to commit to one.
- Finish the ends of small berms that were started around the paddocks when the drain tile was installed.
- Move two piles of dirt that linger. One is left from the rock pile and one is from the excavation of our drainage swale through the pasture. I now have a place they can go:
- Add dirt to the high spot I’m creating in the paddock around the hay feeder. I need to get that done and packed so I can:
- Use up the left-over pile of lime screenings that were spread in the round pen, by packing them on the new high-spot around the hay feeder.
- Pull out the snow tires for Cyndie’s Audi.
- Re-arrange the shop garage to get the plow blades out from storage.
- Change the tires on the Grizzly ATV to the more aggressive winter tires.
- Move the deck furniture into storage.
- Hopefully, get that pile of split firewood moved and stacked in the woodshed.
On the bright side, we are more than content about the major accomplishments we have achieved in preparation for the winter snows. With the drainage swale and drain tile in place, the spring runoff should be much improved. Also the south drainage ditch is cleared wide open for the full distance of our property. There is a fresh application of lime screenings on the slopes in the paddock, a new high spot for horses to stand on, and berms around the upper perimeters. Plus, we buried the drain of the barn gutter downspout so it will dump its water directly into the drainage swale beyond the paddock fence. With the back pasture properly fenced, we will now be able to turn them out on some higher ground, earlier in the season than we were able last year.
I better get to work on the other things. That is, after I go downstairs and replace the battery in the smoke detector that has been chirping since the godawful early hours of this morning. It caused some crazy avoidance/anxiety dreams for hours this morning as I repeatedly tried to fall back asleep so as to delay dealing with it until daytime.
It’s all good!
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Where To?
As I strolled up the driveway yesterday afternoon, the eagle statue caught my eye and it occurred to me that I should consider moving it for the winter. We have placed it in a spectacular spot at the top of the driveway, but during the snow season that spot is right where plowing pushes the snow.
More than once last year, I accidentally hit the poor guy with the blade.
In pondering another location for the statue, I had difficulty coming up with someplace that didn’t also involve snow being dumped. There’s not a good place where it would still have its deserved prominence, yet be out of the way of clearing snow.
I suppose I could find a spot for him somewhere down by the labyrinth, but I’m a little afraid that if I did that, we’d never get around to moving it back up the hill again after the snow is gone, to this great perch by the driveway.
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Inspiring Flow
Well, the threatened blast of a winter storm did deliver as predicted overnight Thursday and into Friday morning. We awoke to a white scene-scape with clouds continuing to unleash serious amounts of new snow. I cleared off the front steps first thing, so I could tell how much more we were getting during the daylight hours. Another inch fell in the morning, bringing our total accumulation to 10 inches. As soon as falling snow started to let up, I headed out to plow.
With temperatures following the storm predicted to rise well above freezing, all I needed to do was clear a path down the middle of the driveway. The sun would take care of the rest. Unfortunately, that simple task was made more complicated by how heavy and sticky the snow was.
Another unfortunate thing about the snow is how exponentially more muddy it has made the paddocks. It’s getting to be quicksand-like mud out there. I expect to be working on re-forming and re-opening a lot of drain channels today.
I opened the one on the back side of the barn yesterday, which involves shoveling out the slushy snow that causes the melt water to stand in place. Once the water has an open channel, it really starts flowing. In a major coup of drainage improvement, the water was not only traveling past the paddock, but even beyond the round pen before heading down toward the main drainage path. That is a great sign that my hopes for minimizing the water from above which previously drained into areas we don’t want it, can be realized. I didn’t think that was possible without more significant re-landscaping.
As good as that was, it wasn’t the highlight of my day. We have rigged one other trick to manage water runoff, and yesterday was the first time it was truly put to the test. We have placed one of our 100 gallon oval watering troughs beneath the downspout of the new gutter on the paddock side of the barn, and attached a garden hose to drain the tub. The hose is long enough to reach about three-quarters of the length of the paddock, where I have placed it into that flow channel from behind the barn.
It is working as well as I wished it could. Maybe even better. Now all the water from the barn roof that used to end up passing through the paddocks is going to be diverted around. That is a huge amount of water and will really help improve the condition of our paddocks. It’s inspiring!
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Last Blast?
With any luck, this will be winter’s last blast of snow. Most of the day yesterday, we received freezing rain and sleet. After their breakfast, we put blankets on the horses to give them a little extra shelter against the freezing moisture. Unfortunately, with our temperatures holding close to the freezing point, the ground stayed soft and those spirited Arabians were running all over the paddocks for some reason.
While feeding them dinner, we decided to bring them into the barn for the night, to give them a break from the mud and precipitation. When we opened the door, Legacy and Cayenne were standing right there, anxious to get in. Legacy had so much mud on his legs that it looked like he was wearing brown knee-highs. Poor Cayenne had a face full of mud from following too close behind another horse that was kicking up a mess when running.
I tried taking pictures with my phone, but couldn’t hold it steady and they were constantly in motion, so all of the images turned out blurry. It’s a shame because they were quite a sight.
I did get one picture before yesterday’s precipitation started to fall. I mentioned in a previous post that the labyrinth was a negative image now that the snow had melted off the rocks, yet still remained where it had been packed for the trail. Here is what it looked like a couple of days ago…
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Threatening Weather
I was just getting ready to whine about the threatening winter storm headed our way, and then I noticed that they had moved our county from “storm warning” to “storm watch.” It isn’t a big difference, but it offers that glimmer of hope to me if forecasters think the highest snow totals might stay north of our location and spare us the worst. The storm they are predicting sounds a lot like the nasty blast we received last May, which did so much damage to our trees from the weight of the wet snow. This one appears to hold a similar threat.
This late-season big snow event is frustrating for us because we were getting very close to turning the corner of having the paddocks start to dry out. While snow accumulations are melting, it is a sure thing that the ground in the paddocks is getting wetter every day. Eventually, when the majority of snow has melted, it gets to a point where there is more water going out than coming in, and then the long, slow process of drying can begin. I’d say yesterday just might have been that point, which is moot now, with new accumulations on the way.
Happily, the project in our basement to build a storage room will go on regardless the conditions outdoors. Yesterday, they installed a ceiling in the room and started building the shelves. Our builder wasn’t able to find trim that would match what already exists in the basement, so we were brainstorming options. He told me it would be possible to steal some of the existing baseboard to use around the door so it will match the other doors downstairs, and then buy new baseboard trim to replace what we stole.
His comments about stealing trim got me thinking about what was on that angled wall of the entertainment center I tore out. They had used the same trim around the cutouts for the television and speakers. Good thing I saved everything. I had forgotten all about it due to having stashed it in the shop garage so long ago. I retrieved enough that he will be able to make it work.
Contemplating both the stormy weather and our new storage room together got me thinking, this room will turn out to be a pretty good storm shelter when it’s done. That’s something that is good to have, but which you don’t ever want to need.
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No Foolin’
I think we just might have gotten past the messiest part of the spring snow melt season yesterday. At least, that’s what the optimist in me is hanging his hopes on. It is hard to shake the memory of that 18 inch snowfall that buried us last May and significantly prolonged the drying out of our property last year, but something is telling me that won’t be our plight this year.
A remarkable amount of ground made its first appearance of 2014 during yesterday’s dose of warmth and wind. We were blessed with two separate periods of relatively light rainfall which is always a big help in melting the snow pack. I was able to make my way along a good portion of our southern property line and was thrilled to find that the new culvert we installed, along with the preliminary improvements to open up the drainage ditch, are functioning brilliantly. It is easy to see where we should continue, and I have renewed inspiration and confidence about what I want to do next to maximize the benefits possible in helping our land drain in a controlled way.
The channel I made on Sunday is still in place at the edge of the southern ditch. Looking back up toward where all the water is coming from, you can see how much it wants to spread out now. One of my goals this summer will be to dig out a more defined creek bed across this field with our tractor, and then soften the edges to a gentle slope, and seed it with grass. Most of the year it will simply be a dry depression, only filling with water during the snow melt or a significant rainfall.
Our water-loving dog, Delilah, is mad about helping me get the water to flow. She runs up and down the channels and tries to bite the water wherever it ripples or gurgles. I like it when she helps down here because the ground isn’t muddy and the water is clean, so she just gets wet. The running back and forth does wonders to burn off her otherwise endless energy. When we came in, I toweled her off as she lay on her back, and then she curled up with the towel and took a nap.
On my way back to the house, I plodded past the labyrinth and discovered an interesting phenomenon. The melting snow is creating an inverse image as compared to the way it looked when I was shoveling the route in winter. It takes longer for packed snow to melt, so the path that I repeatedly trekked with snow shoes is now taller than the border areas of stones. They appear as depressions between the paths now.
It’s true. I’m not just saying that because it’s April 1st. Seriously.
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No Rest
We are now in the season of mud and ice. In the mornings, everything that was squishy and flowing the night before ends up frozen solid. Morning is the best time to get certain things done that require traffic in our wettest areas. After the sun shines on the ground for any length of time, travel around here gets pretty sketchy. I don’t know how the horses put up with it.
Well, actually, I do know one way they deal with it. They lay down and roll in the mud. Shortly after being brushed yesterday, 3 of the 4 laid down and massaged their backs with the manure laced mud. It does wonders for Legacy’s light complexion.
Yesterday was a day of chores for us, and we were blessed by a visit from Elysa and Anne, who helped out with several tasks. In addition to brushing the horses and helping Cyndie clean part of one paddock, they joined us up on the hill of the big field where we took early action on the recently exposed ground.
There were piles of manure that needed to be spread out and broken up, sticks to be collected and removed, weeds to be cut down, and pasture grass seed to be spread. We are hoping to improve the potential of growing desirable grasses, with less weeds, so we can cut it for hay.
The highlight of the day for me was getting water to flow off our property and into the drainage ditch along our southern border. We were getting little rivers of water running from everywhere as the snow melted, but toward the lower portions of our land, it was spreading out and pooling up in the slushy snow that remained. I took a spade shovel and headed down there with Delilah.
The water was almost over my boots in some places, making it quite a challenge to navigate digging a channel out of the slush to provide the water with a straight shot into the creek of runoff that was now flowing along our property border. Because of the way water-follows-water, I like to give it a path that creates enough momentum of flow that the uphill pools get pulled down to fill the void. It’s a lot like priming a pump.
But flowing water is fickle, and if the momentum is slowed by a dam of slush that collects, the water is more than happy to pick an alternate route, or it may simply stop flowing altogether.
The last chore we squeezed into the day was painting the drywall of our new storage room. It got a coat in the morning and another one after dinner to get ready for the finishing touches by our builder this week.
It was the kind of day that leaves you needing another day of the weekend, so you can take a day off to recover. The problem with that is, if we had another day of the weekend, we’d likely end up using it to get even more chores done. There is no rest for the weary.
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Harsh Realities
In the last few days, we have come across a surprising number of animal parts that Delilah has collected from her explorations around our property. I think the melting snow might be revealing some carcasses that were preserved beneath all the white stuff this winter. At least, we hope that explains the dramatic increase in our exposure to the harsh reality of animal mortality lately, as opposed to the possibility that she has become that proficient of a predator.
Cyndie buys a lot of chew toys for our dog, but none of those come close to thrilling Delilah as much as something biological. Oftentimes, we are unable to recognize what she has in her mouth, but it is easy to tell from her behavior and body language that it isn’t one of the toys.
If we are lucky, we are unable to identify what it is. Somehow that is easier to stomach. I felt a bit nauseous yesterday as she chomped away on the very obvious body of a mouse. Then she comes inside and tries to lick our faces with her bad breath while we towel her dry and remove her blaze-orange vest.
Earlier that morning, Cyndie stepped in the house from feeding the horses and said, “I have a blog post title for you…”
“Headless Rabbit.”
I decided not. Cyndie described the unlikely scenario of lifting one of the horse’s feed pans which had been flipped upside down in the paddock, and discovering the carcass of a headless rabbit beneath. We can’t imagine how it ended up there. Maybe one of the horses came across the body and purposely covered it out of respect.
We also have a pile of feathers that Delilah has been working on, which I’m guessing came from one of the many wild turkeys roaming our land. In addition to the deer leg that has been a recent prize, she also is quite fond of chewing on a fair-sized piece of hide; both hoof and hide being something that a pack of coyotes might leave behind.
Another harsh reality we are facing this weekend, with temperatures soaring well-above freezing, is the mud and manure mess we have been anticipating in the paddocks. When the ground here is saturated, it becomes so soft that you sink to the point of losing a boot in many places. That means we don’t dare try driving the tractor into the paddocks now to remove the abundant accumulation of manure. It would sink past the axles. This will be a nasty problem to endure while waiting for the soil to dry out.
It is our first spring with the horses, and this worst-case scenario has us biding our time until we can engineer a remedy, which will likely be a combination of altering landscape to improve drainage, and adding some sand/gravel to a few key areas to improve their footing.
All this “reality” certainly does help to accentuate how far we have come in our move from the refined environment of our previous life in the suburbs.
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Topsy Turvy
I don’t know what it is, spring weather, phase of the moon, tax return preparation, college basketball tournament upsets, or blog hosting sites putting their users through unwanted drama, but things seem a bit chaotic around here recently. It doesn’t help that I am once again on leave from the day-job due to another slowdown in business. Then, there are things like the commercial airplane disappearance, the massive mud slide, Chicago’s commuter train crash, and our dog and cats getting the throw-ups. At least the horses are fine, well… except we received a classic spring rain/snow mix that got them chilled and wet yesterday, so that we needed to move them into the barn for the night.
I captured this picture of one of Delilah’s toys recently, and when I opened it up for viewing on my computer screen, it immediately caused me to think, “That’s exactly what I feel like.”
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Snowing Again!
As of last night, it looked like this out our back door:
Cyndie ended up staying in town overnight, and I am trying to get out of here in the dark wee hours of the morning to get ahead of the mass crush of other commuters, on my way to the day-job. Sadly, that means dragging Delilah out of bed before she is awake, to put her outside in her kennel, and then trying to get horses fed a couple of hours earlier than they expect it, in the wet, snowy darkness. Oh joy.
Those tricky tasks are on top of my otherwise tight routine of simply waking up and getting in the car to get on the road as early as possible. If I don’t leave here early enough, it’s traffic jam city and commuting anguish for me.
An overnight winter storm doesn’t help things one bit. It’s a good thing I signed up for this adventure, or I could become one grumpy bunny.
Actually, I’m a little bit of a grumpy bunny anyway, this morning. Yesterday afternoon, I learned that the plaque detected in my heart by a recent test places me on the wrong side of the healthy curve for men my age. I have been welcomed into the club of aging folks who must take cholesterol medicine and the once-a-day baby aspirin to keep that bad boy from rearing up and surprising me someday when I least expect it. “Preventive medicine.” Gee, my favorite, except I like it to be from exercising and eating well, not from taking meds for the rest of my life.
Actually, when I asked the doctor how long I need to take them, he gave me an out. He said I would probably only need them for another 40 years.
I wonder if I will actually follow his prescription… Right now, I’m thinking that my previous ignorance was bliss. I was just fine until I went in for my latest “well-health” physical.
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Relative Something 