Merry Christmas Blizzard

We’ve been under a blizzard watch for the past couple days (and it won’t end until noon tomorrow the 26th- though it might still snow even if the wind knocks off), so I figured now was as good a time as any to explain to y’all just what we do to take care of the animals when it’s 18 degrees outside with a NNW winds making it feel like a -1. It’s burn your face and fingers kinda cold, folks. Besides that it burns your face, and makes your fingers freeze if they get wet, it covers you in powdery white stuff from head to toe. Literally. As type this, there is an 8 ft drift of snow outside our living room window, we’ve had to shovel snow off the porch 4 times today, and once when I went out to check on the chickens (where I had to bail snow out of their hen house 2X today) I fell into a snow drift. Blizzards are not fun. Snow can be fun, but when you can’t find your own driveway for all the snow, well that’s just, so, not cool.

Since several of y’all have asked lately, I will tell you what we do for the animals here when it storms like this. If it’s not a complete bear cat (like we’re having now), where it’s generally a total white-out we will feed hay to the cows- which I’ll take photos of when we get the chance to do that. The saddle horses and three of our studs are turned out to fend for themselves and chances are they do their best to stay out of the wind and wait out the storm. The mares and yearlings the same. We have a few miscellaneous mares, two crazy goats, and one lonely stud at the corral by the barn along with about 20 calves that didn’t make our shipping loads. Those get fed hay since there isn’t any grass to eat. And this storm, Zach put the Baby Bam and his mama in the barn out of the wind and cold, since he’s still such a tiny baby. We check on the stuff by the barn, because it’s within reach- it wouldn’t be prudent to drive through a pasture looking for animals when it is a white-out as it’s easy to get lost or stuck.

Feeding hay involves getting into the big green tractor, picking up round bales, opening gates and dropping hay. The opening gates part isn’t any fun when it’s snowing and blowing outside.

Other than the above it’s about staying in, staying warm and not going anywhere. Blizzards are good at getting snow where there shouldn’t be snow. Like in the door jam between the screen door and steel door; or in the hen house where you have to shovel snow around because you’re afraid your chickens will be drowned in snow.

With all that said, here are some pictures I snapped. Two of them I took on Christmas Eve, during the morning calm before the storm resumed. The others I snapped this afternoon.

We’ll do our best to stay warm!

Love-

TSDC