Re: Farm Life
Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2017 3:37 pm
I wrote this yesterday afternoon, but couldn't post it because I was too lazy to get up off my butt and go out and brush the snow off the dish. Not really too lazy. Shoveling pathways through the cement, I mean snow, kinda wore me out. Then it rained heaps and made it a slippy slidey wet mess. I think I'm going to do a lot of contemplating today, and not much else. Maybe put some fresh straw in everyone's shelter so they have dry bedding for the cold front coming in. Bring in Freckles blanket to make sure it's good and dry too. And keep that fire going. At least the cold makes for a nice ruddy complexion.
I'm sitting here with my feet up, looking at the non stop snow falling out the windows, and with a big sigh realize I'm not going back out there again anytime soon, not even to brush the snow off the satellite dish. It took me two hours to do what normally takes no more than 30 minutes this morning to feed and water everyone. And my coat and snow pants were soaked all the way through. My coat must have weighed about 20 pounds when I took it off. There was no waiting until it let up or stopped as it hasn't for hours and doesn't look like it going to anytime soon. It's wet and heavy stuff, and I am so thankful we spent the last couple days cutting up wood in preparation for this.
In a few days we're supposed to have very cold temperatures, possibly below zero (F), which is always worrisome. Next year we want to rent out a ditch digger and put some of the electrical and the water to the animals underground. That will make life easier in the winter. I have to laugh as I remember my long time friend who came to visit last week and said the Farmer's Almanac predicted it to be a drier winter. I thought so too until just a few days ago. It's doing some serious catching up. I think I mentioned we decided not to take the free snow blower, beings how it was a Montgomery Wards model that would take some kind of young weight lifter to pull start, if you could get it to start at all.
We did manage to get the hay off the truck before this latest storm hit, for which I am grateful. I found a new outlet from a local farmer to buy my hay. Really nice guy who hand loaded it for me. I told him about my previous experience and he agreed that almost a quarter of the two ton I had bought from the previous guy being unusable was definitely not okay. I briefly thought about tying it down and thought, I'll just drive slow and it will be okay. Which works some of the time. This time it did not. I hit a pothole and looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see a bale hit the road behind me and come apart. Another fell off too as I was already pulling over but didn't split open and was salvaged. My own damn fault for not tying it down. About 3 - 4 vehicles went by and then one guy stopped and offered to help me. I declined, saying I was just going to push it off the road into the field. But he was really nice. And then the guy I bought the hay from texted me and offered to replace the bale I lost. That was pretty nice too. I declined that as well, as I totally knew better and figured the loss would help me remember next time, to take the extra time.
It's good to know there are still some nice people out there, and you can meet them just in your everyday life, sometimes under the strangest or most unexpected circumstances. The guy I used to get hay from all last winter had a young adult son who loaded the hay for me about half the time. I had to explain to the different people who went with me that, yes, he really was like that all the time, like he hated the world and, well, surly basically sums it up. Chronically in a bad mood. I won't miss that. There are still so many things we wanted to get done and didn't. But I guess the most essential of them did get done, and we are still in way better shape this year than we were last year at this time. No hauling water from the neighbors, no sitting inside in snow pants. No climbing over fences either as I can actually open and use all the gates! And it's exciting to think about the days getting longer again here in just a couple weeks. We're a long ways from spring, but even just more light is something to look forward to.
It's still coming down out there and we've probably had around 8-10 inches fall since sometime last night, and already had about 10 inches that had compressed considerably before this. And it already looks like early evening. Maybe some coffee with Irish Cream is in order. Hmmm...
I'm sitting here with my feet up, looking at the non stop snow falling out the windows, and with a big sigh realize I'm not going back out there again anytime soon, not even to brush the snow off the satellite dish. It took me two hours to do what normally takes no more than 30 minutes this morning to feed and water everyone. And my coat and snow pants were soaked all the way through. My coat must have weighed about 20 pounds when I took it off. There was no waiting until it let up or stopped as it hasn't for hours and doesn't look like it going to anytime soon. It's wet and heavy stuff, and I am so thankful we spent the last couple days cutting up wood in preparation for this.
In a few days we're supposed to have very cold temperatures, possibly below zero (F), which is always worrisome. Next year we want to rent out a ditch digger and put some of the electrical and the water to the animals underground. That will make life easier in the winter. I have to laugh as I remember my long time friend who came to visit last week and said the Farmer's Almanac predicted it to be a drier winter. I thought so too until just a few days ago. It's doing some serious catching up. I think I mentioned we decided not to take the free snow blower, beings how it was a Montgomery Wards model that would take some kind of young weight lifter to pull start, if you could get it to start at all.
We did manage to get the hay off the truck before this latest storm hit, for which I am grateful. I found a new outlet from a local farmer to buy my hay. Really nice guy who hand loaded it for me. I told him about my previous experience and he agreed that almost a quarter of the two ton I had bought from the previous guy being unusable was definitely not okay. I briefly thought about tying it down and thought, I'll just drive slow and it will be okay. Which works some of the time. This time it did not. I hit a pothole and looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see a bale hit the road behind me and come apart. Another fell off too as I was already pulling over but didn't split open and was salvaged. My own damn fault for not tying it down. About 3 - 4 vehicles went by and then one guy stopped and offered to help me. I declined, saying I was just going to push it off the road into the field. But he was really nice. And then the guy I bought the hay from texted me and offered to replace the bale I lost. That was pretty nice too. I declined that as well, as I totally knew better and figured the loss would help me remember next time, to take the extra time.
It's good to know there are still some nice people out there, and you can meet them just in your everyday life, sometimes under the strangest or most unexpected circumstances. The guy I used to get hay from all last winter had a young adult son who loaded the hay for me about half the time. I had to explain to the different people who went with me that, yes, he really was like that all the time, like he hated the world and, well, surly basically sums it up. Chronically in a bad mood. I won't miss that. There are still so many things we wanted to get done and didn't. But I guess the most essential of them did get done, and we are still in way better shape this year than we were last year at this time. No hauling water from the neighbors, no sitting inside in snow pants. No climbing over fences either as I can actually open and use all the gates! And it's exciting to think about the days getting longer again here in just a couple weeks. We're a long ways from spring, but even just more light is something to look forward to.
It's still coming down out there and we've probably had around 8-10 inches fall since sometime last night, and already had about 10 inches that had compressed considerably before this. And it already looks like early evening. Maybe some coffee with Irish Cream is in order. Hmmm...