A Day Off From Snow Removal

Bruce's father tells of the days they used shovels to open the driveway after snowstorms and of the wind filling it back in by morning.  Eventually they bought a tractor with a loader on the front.  This was a huge improvement in saving time and human wear and tear but using it created huge banks of snow and the wind was able to fill the area that much deeper. Cleaning it out the next time was a bigger job than before.  The summer I arrived here we purchased a 6 ft. snow blower on an auction.  It could be used on our smallest tractor, the loader tractor, and would remove the snow and only leave banks as high as the snow it was removing.  The downside was it was used on an open tractor so, at times, you would get plenty of snow thrown back at you depending on the wind.  Even with that, it seemed like a piece of equipment straight from heaven!  In 1995 we upgraded to this 8 ft. blower that would fit on our cab tractor.  The driveway in the video is probably about 15% of what we need to plow these days.  In snows like this we have two neighbors we help out also.  The snow blower and alternator are wonderful pieces of equipment that we are perfectly content owning but never using.

It was a quiet day on the farm.  Bruce was again able to fill the feed box out of the silo at Ed's.  The sick cows are eating hay and holding their own.  The latest cow that freshened has passed her drug test  and is now being milked into the tank  Tonight the two special needs cows added 45 minutes to the evening by the time we stop milking, pull the pipe out of the tank, milk each of them, and deliver the medications they need.  The cow the vet saw has most of her placenta still inside and attached so she will need to be watched closely for awhile yet. There are some things on farms that are frustrating.  The days are long and even when you do everything right the cows don't necessarily read the manual.  These are the days we repeat over and over and over, "this too shall pass".  

We are wishing for warmer weather so the barns and yards will thaw.  The heifers in the lower building have to get down on their "knees" to eat their grain because there is so much frozen manure/bedding in there.  Generally, by this point in winter, we have a thaw and the opportunity to get everyone back down on the ground.  When it does thaw there is a good chance that we will be piling everything because the snow is so deep in the fields we can't get to or through the fields it should go on.  If we did spread on the snow many of the nutrients would run off with the snow melt and not be available for our corn crop.  Piling means we will have double the work but atleast the cattle situation will be improved.

I spent a good portion of the day paying bills and finding the desk.  It's time to get the books in order and delivered to the accountant since, for us, taxes are due March 15.