22 December 2022

Not Fun Anymore

This officially isn’t fun anymore.
The sun is shining, but without warmth or kindness. It lights the sky so we can see, but no more than that.
The wind is howling, whipping up the powder dry snow that falls when it is too cold for real snow containing moisture. The snow bites at any exposed skin, leaving it just damp enough to freeze quickly under a layer of ice.
My pickup gave up yesterday. One vehicle would start this morning. It has been running ever since. Walking to and from the quanset trying to get things running and cattle fed would be a death march.
Actual temps right now are 17 below zero, farenheight. Did you know that 40 below is the same farenheight or celcious? The windchill is 45 below.
It’s a wonder any of the animals made the night. I have doubts about Popcorn having made it this far without her blanket. She had ice frozen to her chin like a goatee and was moving slow when I grained them this morning. The calves were shivering. Hunched against the cold.
The beef herd is huddled in their windbreak, hungry and waiting for us to feed them. The feed truck started, eventually. It died a couple of times but I made it to the bunks. Cows came running looking for their breakfast. They were willing to brave the wind for alfalfa and corn.
Then the truck died.
The guilt I felt feeling the hopeful eyes of the cows on me as I walked away. So close to getting them food, but so far.
The payloader wouldn’t even try. My husband is out there working on it now.
The children haven’t been out of pajamas for a couple of days now. I keep thinking I should make them get dressed. But why? They don’t need to go out into this. Nothing should have to.
My hindquarters are beginning to thaw. It’s time to get dressed again. My husband has been out there awhile. Need to make sure he hasn’t froze solid. I want to try to dig a path through one of the drifts so I can get things into the barn. it’s not warmer in there but maybe with all the milk cows and calved huddled together they could raise the temp a bit and get a break from the wind.
We are lucky. I’m not complaining. We have neighbors who have lots power. Others with family snowed in far from home, or at home. Or cows have hay left over from yesterday and are well sheltered. The horses have plenty of hay. We are all here together. Life is still good.
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21 December 2022

Cold And Snowy

The blizzard is officially over.
I think?
Now we have -12F, with the wind howling and slow flurries. I’ve been mocking them a little. School is being canceled again?! For up to an inch of snow??
Now that it’s here I have been properly chastised. It’s cold. The feed truck, my trusty winter mount. Always willing and faithful, able to start in the coldest of weather, has failed.
She couldn’t manage to start yesterday. After battery chargers and being plugged in I was able to feed the load she carried, mid afternoon.
Then she got reloaded and…. died. Right there in the middle of the road she gave up and quit. I called my husband. He happily and enthusiastically came home from work early to work on her in the freezing weather.
Well, maybe not. He did come work on her.
He got her going again and she got parked in the shed where she could be plugged in for the night.
This morning she started happily. Because school was already canceled my husband was home to help feed. It went well, until she died again. He finished putting out bales then came to manually pump fuel to get her started. I was able to finish feeding and get reloaded. With firm instruction to keep gas to her!
She tried to die again. I floored it. In neutral of course. She lugged along sounding more dead than alive until she gasped for breath and came alive again.
I urged her back to the comfort of the shed and left her there until tomorrow.
The valiant battle against the snow drifts blocking the roads was won. But the battle was won while the war was lost. Drifts are collapsing. One lady we know was trapped in her car when a drift collapsed on it.
The light snow flurries are quickly drifting things once open closed again. The temperatures keep the ability to fight to a minimum.
I just came in from blanketing my cow. She was sick this fall and is skinny anyway from being such a good milker. I worried about her in this cold and driving wind. I would have blanketed her sooner had I thought about it.
The cows have more food than they can eat tonight. The horses are fat and fluffy. They got a full bale with not net or even bale feeder to restrict their access. The black kitty has been spending time on the porch and is now sleeping cuddled in the favorite cat hole in the straw. Milk cows got more corn than is probably good for them and one a blanket. Things are settled in best we can do for them.
The children haven’t gotten out of their pajamas all day. As much as I like to drag them outside for at least a little bit even in the worst weather, this is more than I will make them do. We cuddle with them and try to warm up between our trips outside to take care of animals. Our house is warm and has electricity . We’ve got it good.
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20 December 2022

I Don’t Even Know What Day Of The Blizzard

The winds have, for the most part, quieted. The sun has been shining on the black hides of the cows warming them as they rest and recover laying and soaking up the warmth. The children have been off exploring colossal snow drift. The adults have been getting to sit down a little bit. Trying to catch a glimpse of this cabin fever we’ve heard some people talk about. Or at least a bit of rest.
We woke to fog yesterday.
Hoar frost covered tree branches, fences, and animals. The ground and the very air glistened white. God decorated his creation with such beauty it seem sacrilig to disturb it. Still and silent the world shined under its blanket of crystal. Even the sun was decorated, sundogs nearly circling it.
Until the wind came to destroy the tranquility. No longer whipping, instead quiet and insidious. Just enough to blow the crystals in the air at our faces stinging and cold. Falling to the ground they mix with the snow. The windchill dropped and my face froze walking back to the house after feeding.
It was time to try to make it to the store. My husband and children had gone off to work already. The highway was plowed in a fierce battle against drifts. My husband had blown a path clear to get to the highway. We were almost out of milk.
It felt weird reentering the rest of the world. The drifts along the way were fascinating. The roads were mostly clear, just narrow. All the stores were out of milk.
Except our little local store. The one that had been out before the snow. It made me feel dreadfully guilty for giving business to the behemoth instead.
We developed a new kitty through the storm.
The small black cat has been around for a few weeks now. Yowling at us from a distance, we’ve been putting feed out to appease it. It had not been willing to let us get close. By the end of the snow it came to our back door with it’s loud demands.
My husband fed it and petted it. Apparently that broke the barrier. She now not only lets, but noisily request petting and holding. We worry about our own cats response to an intruder and are not willing to let her in the house. She has been spending large parts of her days on the back porch keeping warm and we’re trying to get some weight on her.
Until then she has been Christened Bones. A fitting name for her tiny skeletal form.
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17 December 2022

Still Blizzarding

Today was the first nice snow day!
Feeding took a normal amount of time and the cows were happy to come out of their quickly shrinking shelter. The milk cows still needed water hauled to them. We’ll try taking them out a different gate and moving them to water that way this afternoon.
The kids went out to explore the giant drifts in the tree row. They are almost as tall as the trees and from the top we can look past the trees and get our first glimpse of the outside world that we’ve had for days.
The corn stalks caught some snow. That’s why people leave stubble, to catch the snow and provide moisture for next summer.
They didn’t catch all the snow. That’s why it is so deep anywhere there’s shelter.
From the top of the drifts we watched my husband head out with the snow blower. Trying to dig his way to the highway, then to clear his sisters driveway. Our driveway wasn’t bad. Drifts covered the road the whole way to the highway.
The highway was open. For a little ways. As far as people had had to clear to get feed to their cattle. My friend had given it a try to see if she could get to town. She confirmed that it was clear from those peoples house as far as their cows. The snow plows are focusing on busier roads. Nothing on this one has been touched.
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16 December 2022

What a difference a day makes.
Not like over night, but during the day. The wind died down a bit. Or the snow has blown to where it is going to blow. The sun was shining and the sky as blue this morning as it was this afternoon. Not that you can tell.
The drifts that were as big as I had ever seen yesterday were bigger today. The cows were tired. They have shelter and food but the constant snow and cold was taking its toll. I feel awful for cows that people can’t get to. There are people who have been digging all day, all day for the last few days, trying to get to cows. We’re lucky to have ours home, close, and equipment that can reach them.
The milk cows are trapped in their nice sheltered place. That’s the problem with shelter. It shelters snow too and drifts build. I’ve been hauling water to them. They have their bale and are good except for water.
I let the horses up to the barn this morning. I was going to let them in. Rust didn’t even hesitate, he jumped right through the chest high snow bank after me when I called. That got them near the barn, but not in it. That last snow bank was chest high and wide. Much wider than the one he jumped through for me. None of them would try it.
It was better sheltered next to the barn and I hauled the last of the hay I had put away in the barn out to them.
When we went out tonight the horses happily left their sheltered place and ran back out to their pen.
Hopefully the wind stays down and we can dig out and have it stay dug out for more than a few minutes.
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15 December 2022

Blizzard Forth Day

Today is the worst day yet. It could just be that I’m getting tired. The cattle are getting tired. The long cold and wind is starting to wear on us all. Digging out the same gate over and over again, more snow every time, to get to the cows gets old.
So many things to be grateful for, and I am, so very much. My husband is home with me and the kids, not having to be off somewhere else working. We get to work together, which means we also get to rest together in between. He is capable of fixing the equipment when it breaks so we can keep taking care of the animals.
We have that big equipment to dig out and to help us make sure the cattle are cared for. The cattle have good shelter and there is plenty of feed to keep them happy and warm. Our house is snug and warm. We haven’t lost electricity yet! For the first few days we figured it would be when, not if.
But the wind.
It never stops.
Any path that is cleared gets blown back in in minutes. The drifts are huge. Some taller than I ever remember seeing. Even in shelter the blown snow sifts down from the sky. A fine mist that gets in your lungs. We aren’t going to lose cattle to the cold and snow, we’ll lose them to lung problems afterwards.
Although we have had our first loss. A calf who laid down and died in the middle of the corral. No idea why or what. This will weed out the weak.
We had planned to have calves weaned a couple of weeks ago. One thing or another has kept us from doing it. This storm being one of them. Sometimes it’s good not to get everything done on time. The stress and not having as good of shelter would have been worse for them.
We dug our way out to the bulls this morning. They have shelter, but ran out of hay. It was a fight and some impressive digging. The lane we would have been feeding calves up, had they been weaned, is blown completely shut. Now it’s blocked even more with the round about path that was the easiest way to get to bulls.
The dairy herd wouldn’t walk through a waist high drift to get to water. So I broke through it for them then chased them through. And dug out their trough for grain. Now I need to go back out and make sure they went back to their hay.
The effort of going out and facing that wind again is daunting. My arms ache from digging. My face is wind burnt. My legs don’t ever want to face another snow drift.
But, I have happy children playing at their computers, after spending the morning helping feed and playing in the snow. I got to lay around this afternoon and take a nap! We’re warm, and full, and life is good!
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13 December 2022

Blizzard, First Day

They dismissed school early yesterday. There was a rumor roads would be closed mid afternoon. Before it ever started snowing. A rumor confirmed by the principal. But not actually acted on.
Shortly after school was called early it was canceled for the next two days. I had to run to the next town over to pick up the last gallon of milk they had. In our preferred type. Apparently no one likes skim 😉
Then it was home to get ready for the storm.
A load of feed quickly called the cows in from cornstalks and we locked them in the corrals for the night. They’d probably come in one there own but might as well start out with them there.
A heavy mist left a layer of ice on everything. By morning snow had set in. Drifts were high. We either waded through knee high drifts or walked on blown bare ground as we walked down to feed cows.
We had started out driving but snow drifts are hard enough to see in white out conditions, much less through iced over windows. We stuck the suburban almost immediately.
The payloader was parked in the quanset facing out. once we shoveled enough to get the door open it was ready to go to work. The extra help digging helped get the feed truck out much easier. Then it went to work getting the gate dug out enough to get a bale in to the cows.
With bales set out in the most protected spots the cows spent the day snow covered but sheltered and warm. Snow fell gently on their backs instead of wind driven.
The horses chose to stay out for the morning. I insisted on them coming into the barn after lunch. The milk cows and bottle calves are also well sheltered with a shed they can go in.
The animals will make it through this just fine. No idea how much snow there is. Between bare ground and waist high drifts it could be anything. We are good here, luckily because every road in the panhandle is closed. So we are tucked in, enjoying hanging out together.
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1 November 2022

Rough weekend

It’s been a rough weekend.
The worlds bestest yellow dog has gone missing. No, she’s never tied or confined in
any way. No, she never goes anywhere. In the eleven years she’s been with us she has wandered twice. It would be best if she would how up wondering why we’re acting so weird, she just went for a walk about. In reality, we hope it was peaceful.
She was the best dog anyone could hope for. Always there, loyal and happy. She was a great cow dog. Mostly because she called off. She was patient with the children as they grew from babies to little people who wanted to play. She will be greatly missed and I have a hard time not calling her to hop on the fourwheeler with me, even when it’s going out to search for her again.
Popcorn, our sweet little milk cow has been sick. We thought it was pneumonia but the vet says displaced abdomen. Still need to do some reading up on that.
She appears to be feeling better. She spent the night camping in our yard because she was willing to eat grass and I was willing to get it to her however I could. When she laid down and decided she didn’t want to go back to her pen I ran a single strand of non electric, electric fence around her and left her where she wanted to be for the night. Her temp was a bit low at the vet so we had a blanketed cow roaming our yard.
Today she requested to be let back into her pen, so she is reunited with the bottle calves. I do doubt her decision here 😉 But she is finally eating and looks much happier. Hopefully she will make a full recovery.
We will be looking for a dog to fill the empty void Daisy has left. But are not in any rush. We’re still hoping she might show back up. Also, when dogs are meant to be they seem to find you instead of the other way around. So maybe instead of looking we are now waiting to be found.
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31 October 2022

Windmill Repairs

We had a date. Just my husband and I. Off to check cows.

I would check cows. He came along to see how his wheat fields were looking.

As we came over the hill to the first windmill I was telling him how I had set the break on the windmill so it wasn’t pumping all the time. Just the solar pump with a float so it would shut off when not needed was going. No point in pumping water that wasn’t needed when the cows weren’t drinking out of it anymore.

And there they were. A large bunch of cows laying alongside the tank. Just to prove me wrong. We adjusted the float, checked things out, and continued on to the tank they were supposed to be drinking out of.

There we found the rest of the herd gathered around a slightly muddy tank. Not a drop of water.

The windmill was just repaired barely a week ago. And here it was broken in a new way.

We scrounged through the pickup for my usual windmill repair tools. Fence stretchers, fence pliers, and a regular pair of pliers. It took a bit to convince my husband that fence stretchers will work to pull the rod up out of the windmill enough to reattach it. He’s used to working with real and proper tools.

I found the chain that had been attached, before they ‘fixed’ it and thought we could use that to hook things back together. He doubted my ingenuity and went looking for better. For lack of a large washer he found the piece that used to hold the spare tire on my pickup, up underneath the box. It had broken off one day this summer. At another windmill luckily. I went to check it and there was a tire laying there that I swore I hadn’t even seen there before. Turns out it was from my pickup and had fallen off at just the right place. Now it would work to hold the windmill together.

Holding my set of pliers as he turned the bold with the fence pliers I  held to close to the joint. They slipped off and I pinched my finger. Cussing the newly forming blood blister I went back to holding. Then realized I was holding in the same place again. That was stupid of me I thought. As the pliers slipped again and I pinched the other finger. Not as bad this time. That was brilliant.

As we worked Ghost and another cow who had eaten from my hand for the first time last time I was there were begging frantically for food from outside the windmill frame. When I had a moment I gave them some of the cake I had brought along. The new cow hasn’t learned manners yet. She chomped down enthusiastically on yet another finger. The bruising began immediately under the nail.

My hands hurt!

When I turned around my husband was gone. Weird. I thought he had been standing right behind me. He must have gone to the pickup. I gathered a few things and carried them back with me. He wasn’t there. Where could he have gotten off to?

Finally I looked up.

He had climbed the windmill! No breezes were coming along to turn it for us so we could check our repairs so he was tuning it manually. Needs must, make do or do without, and all that. There’s always a way to get the job done when you don’t want to make the rather impressive drive in there to the middle of nowhere again.

It looked good. Guess I’ll find out for sure tomorrow when I make the drive again.

 

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18 October 2022

Silence

It was perfectly still.

With the fourwheeler shut off the silence echoed in my ears. It was overwhelming, nearly deafening. The absolute lack of sound came as a shock. We get so used to noise in our modern lives. The hum of electronics, radios droning on, people, vehicles. I stood for a moment and listened. I remember thinking how there wasn’t even wind through the few scraggly trees.

It’s my favorite old house. The one I would choose to live in if I could pick any of the houses on the place.The practicalities of modern living make that impossible of course. As much as the completely fallen down state of the house. There’s no road in, no electricity, no hope of internet. Just a house sat out in the middle of a pasture. The roof is gone. So is the floor. Walking upstairs would be suicide, even though the stairs are technically there.

Not too long ago the carcass of a yearling bull had hung from the floor joists. He had found his way in through a missing wall or maybe the door. A part of the house has a cellar. The floor wasn’t enough to hold his weight. With front and hind legs on opposite sides of the joist I will hope that his back was broke when the legs went through. If not, he hung there until he died, fragments of skin held the skeleton there as a grim reminder not to take chances with a falling down house.

Now his bones shine white under the house.

Shaking off the eerie stillness I went back to work. My job was to keep any more cattle from sharing the young bulls fate. We wanted to make use of the grass growing around the house, but keep cattle out of the house. One wall is gone and one door easily accessible. I had to fence them out. Walking about the house, hammering and stretching wire, I looked down and saw a penny! Picking it up I recognized a design no longer used. Peering through the pattena I thought I saw 1929. Excited by my find, but busy at work, I slipped it into my pocket, it could be cleaned up and inspected closer when I was done.

As I nailed wire to the house bits of plaster and dirt rained down on my head. It made me keep a wary eye out above. As the walls begin to bulge out at odd angles it’s easy to imagine the whole thing coming down on my head. More and more pieces of trim and eaves are being scattered across the ground with every wind storm. This beautiful old house only has a short time left. There’s not enough left there to save.

Once home I was telling my husband about fencing out the house. About the silence there. How everywhere else I traveled through the day, fixing fence and moving cattle there had been the noise of wind, cattle lowing, distant traffic. But not there. There had been silence.

Which reminded me of my penny!

Excitedly I dug into my pocket to show him. Searching the depths I found only lint. Then the other pockets just to be sure. Nothing.

They kept it, he said.

 

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