Yesterday I was bemoaning the lack of snow, and somebody must have heard me. Today it has snowed since early light, and now at midafternoon it's still coming down. Big flakes pelting down, little flakes flung horizontally in a stiff wind, flakes hissing against one's coat, fat flakes clinging to the dogs' fur. The Stanley Homemakers Club meeting is cancelled for this afternoon; we have too many people who would have to drive snowy back roads, and a few others who would have to drive the even more terrifying Interstate. So it's just as well.
We need it, of course. November was just another dry month in a dry year (actually, November is more often dry here than not), and we've been impatiently waiting for the promised El Nino moisture. Five inches of fluffy snow is a start, though. The weather guys keep promising us "A Parade O' Storms." We'll see.
Running a farm isn't all that much fun in a snowstorm. If you have stock of one kind or another, they still need taking care of, and they need you out there. Normally we water all the birds in their respective pens and paddocks by hose, but in this weather the hoses are of course frozen. If the temperature had gotten above freezing some time during the day we could possibly have gotten by with breaking the ice in the water dishes, but not today. In the deep dishes the ice was several inches thick, and the smaller ones had frozen solid. So we filled gallon juice jugs with warm water and pulled them down to the birds on a new sled we bought recently for just this purpose. This was, of course, after dressing in long underwear, boots, gloves, furry hats or hoods--cold weather gets so complicated! But the birdies are all fed and watered and have enough shelter to be reasonably happy. Okay, maybe not happy. They won't be happy until spring comes.
Hello - snow & dry cold weather - what I wouldn't give for that! Here in the midlands of the UK November was the wettest on record & Decemeber looks to be the same. I'm fighting a losing battle with mud in the house, on the dogs,in the horse paddock - urgh. The bird's pen is now a mud bath so we'll be hiring a tractor to move the hen houses onto a new green patch. But I expect that will be a mud bath in a matter of weeks if this rain sets in for the month! And to cap it all, mice have moved into the house & refuse to move out. Time to put up the Xmas decorations & focus on the festivities!
ReplyDeleteYup, I can just see the little mice faces peeking out from a wreath. Say--that sounds like an idea for next year's craft fairs!
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