Today was a challenge but it wasn’t as bad as yesterday. We were greeted this morining with over 20 inches of snow that had drifted through the night. Kevin had to walk to the machine shed to get a tractor and blade. He walked through drifts that were waist high at times.
The first item on his agenda was to get to the cattle to check and feed them. He does this every morning but today wasn’t like every morning. He had to blade and dig through snow drifts that were six to ten feet high at times. On a normal day he can make it from our house to the cattle pasture in about three minutes. Today, it took him over three hours to find the cattle pasture.
Once he made it to the cattle, he had to dig his way through the snow drifts. The cattle were down by the timber out of the wind where they were protected. The snow was too deep for the cows and their calves to walk through. Kevin spent the next few hours blading a path for the cattle and calves to walk through so they could get to the feed bunk and fresh water.
Next he had to blade a path to the hay stack so he could put out more hay for the cows. That was not an easy task either since snow was drifted up around the stack and needed to be dug out. By the time he finished the cattle chores it was after 1:00 pm.
He spent the remainder of the afternoon blading out the driveway around the barns so we could get the feed truck in and out of the driveway and to the feed bins. This might sound like a quick job but with 2o inches of snow on the ground and drifts as tall as we are, it takes a lot of time.
It’s after 9:00 pm and Kevin is still outside trying to open up our driveways. He reluctantly came in long enough to eat dinner and headed back outside to face the cold weather and snow. It will probably take him all night to finish blading all the snow we have. It would be easier to come inside and go to bed but the hogs are going to need feed in the morning so that isn’t an option.
Our hope is once the driveway is clear the Department of Transportation will find time to blade out the highway in front of our farm. It’s been over two days since the highway has had a DOT truck on it. If the road isn’t opened, Kevin is afraid he will have to blade a path for the feed truck so it can make it to the farm tomorrow.
The bright spot in our day was hearing the groundhog didn’t see his shadow and that spring should be early this year. Check back tomorrow, hopefully Thursday will bring new hope and lots of sun shine to melt the snow!
chrischinn 