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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14 December 2022

Second Day Blizzard

The battle for breakfast.
Mostly I think the snow is so beautiful and love taking a million pictures of the drifts. Sharing them means there was a bit more purpose to my taking them.
Getting the horses out of the barn was easier than expected. The gate had blown mostly clean instead of drifting. I opened it up and Helly ran out. Then turned around and asked to come back in please. By then I had freed Rusty and he quickly cleared Heildorf from the gate.
The snow was up to their bellies. They plowed through and made it slightly easier for me to open it up for them to get back out to their pen.
By the time I got to the quanset the children were already there! Yesterday our son came along to feed. He can’t handle the sitting inside and it was best for everyone involved if he got out and used up some energy. Today we forced his sister to come along too.
They were climbing the drifts and snow piles. I got there in time to hear my husband yelling for them to get off the snow pile so he could plow snow there!
My husband plowed with the payloader, then got to where he could get the snow blower out. That cleared faster and better. It wasn’t long at all before we could all pile in the feed truck, me children, and dog, it was full, and start feeding cows.
The cows came for their food. Interested, but not overly enthusiastic. The bales we put out last night had kept them happy. They had shelter and food and came through just fine.
The same can not be said of the snow blower tractor. It made it through enough clearing to feed, then the ball joint on a steering rod gave out.
After spending the morning clearing snow and feeding my husband will be taking that apart and trying to get it patched together enough to work this afternoon. I know how sore and tired I am. I can only imagine how much he is not going to enjoy that and would rather come inside and sit for a bit. I would rather he could come in and sit for a bit too.
Good hard working men are worth their weight in gold and should be fully appreciated.
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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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2 December 2022

Advent Calendar Time

December is here. That means it’s time to start some of our favorite traditions.

Advent calendars!

Not the usual kind. We’ve done that but aren’t very good at it.

We have one new one this year. A Christmas tree. All computery like. It has 25 lights on it. My husband sat down with the kids in the end of November and explained to them how he was programing it. Did i stick? Do they suddenly know how to program in java?

No.

Do I even know that that’s what he was doing it in?

Again, no.

But they were very interested and actually paid attention for once, so there’s that. The lights are coming on one at a time, a new one each day of the month. He showed them the numbers for different colors of light and all the things I have no clue about.

The other one, that we do every year with a LOT of enthusiasm, is Mary and Joseph. They travel around our house having all sorts of adventures. Until, eventually, they reach a stable where baby Jesus is born.

I have fun moving them around and trying to come up with fun things for the pair to do. They ride on horse drawn wagons, in tractors, even trains. We’ve added on considerably to the original stable kit they all came in. Now there are cows, fences, chickens, horses. All the good farm toy set accoutrements.

It will be fun to see what the lovely family gets up to on their trip this year. I love when the kids help with the daily moving and how enthusiastically they search for the new locations.

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23 November 2022

Elk

We had to go back to eastern Nebraska last weekend. As I was driving on the way home my husband went off about something in the field over there. Did I see it!!
It’s hard to pick something out in a field while speeding down the highway.
Luckily there were no other cars. I managed to spot it.
We discussed if we really could have seen what we thought we thought we saw out there. Just to be sure I flipped around and we went back to look.
Pulling off onto the shoulder we stopped to get a really good look. And some pictures.
It was an elk! A big bull elk. The antlers were clearly visible from the middle of the field where he lay comfortably among a herd of cattle.
We have plenty of elk back here. But to see an elk in the overpopulated civilized eastern half of the state? Ok, maybe more central than eastern. Was he a pet? It seems unlikely but who knows. Was he just wandering through or is there good habitat among the fields and pastures?
No matter what he was fun, and impressive, to see.

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21 October 2022

Lost Shoes

After waiting all night, daylight had finally come. It was time to unload the semis.
Strangely the people working at the elevators want to go home at night. Between that and the worry about working lights on the semis, they have to stop hauling corn over night. After getting the trailers on hand full they were left parked for the night.
Now we could finally haul them in. And hopefully find the missing shoes.
We dug up chicken wire and were hoping no one would be waiting in line as we sifted for shoes and socks.
The same very nice kid was there again today. Kid as in a youngster somewhere in his twenties probably. Maybe thirty. Kids get older as I do. He wasn’t worried at all about finding the shoes. Even less about accidentally running socks through the augers and into the big grain elevators.
They get wrenches and even pry-bars through regularly he said. Those cause some damage, getting stuck in the augers or the conveyor belt. They’ll shut the whole elevator down. Socks are no big deal. Boots will catch for sure in the grate. Don’t worry about sifting through the chicken wire.
My husband and I crouched on the grate watching for shoes. Our son wouldn’t crawl under there but waited to grab them as we handed them out. Our daughter wouldn’t leave the truck. It’s hard to almost b a teenager and have to be embarrassed by everything. We waited, and waited, then waited some more. So much corn came out, could we have missed a boot somewhere? Then with a thump and a pile of grain, one pretty turquoise boot landed on the grate. Slowly all the others followed. From both compartments, no simple searching through one for us. That’s a long time crouched in the corn dust and chaff watching for shoes. Fifty seven some thousand pounds of corn, I checked the ticket. And six shoes buried in there.
We found them! And one sock tucked neatly in its boot. The partner never to be seen again. That poor lonely sock. Is it better to be the one survivor or to pass on with your friends and companions? Who knows what great adventures they will get up to. Eaten by a cow? Hung up for eternity in the grain bins? We can only imagine.
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20 October 2022

Corn Harvest ’22

Corn harvest has begun. The weather is beautiful for it. Perfect for the children to get out and play in the grain trailers.
Perfect even for them to have friends over to play in the trailers with them. These things are always more fun with friends. For me especially because it means I don’t need to get in there with them. I had a chance to ride a few rounds in the combine with my husband.
A date!
When we got back to make the last dump the children were waving at us, just as they had done for every other load of corn.
I got out of the combine to let the extra children know their mom was here. Time to get out and head home.
That was when I got the news. One friends shoes were in the trailer!
Ok I could deal with that. We’d go digging, maybe we could find them. But that wasn’t all. Apparently everyone’s shoes were in the trailer! Under the load of corn we had just dumped.
Why hadn’t we stopped dumping corn? Couldn’t we see them waving at us?
Well, yes. We saw the waving. Just like we had seen all the other waving. Why didn’t you guys get the boots picked up instead of waving?
What was there to do but laugh? The boots were all well buried. There was no finding them under a full combine load of corn. We will figure out a way to sort them in the morning.
Boots are one thing. The socks add a whole ‘nother level of difficulty.
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6 October 2022

Chasing Rainbows

The sun shone bright under dark clouds as I picked the kids up from the bus. They had gotten rained on in town. Here there was no more than an occasional mist.

At home they hopped out at the corn field. A small corner had been wind-rowed for hay and was more appealing than they could resist. They were going to pick up some ears! I just happened to have a bucket in back of the pickup. They were set.

I went on to the house and started feeding animals and gathering from the garden for supper. The footsteps of my daughter echoed through the yard as she ran for the house. I waited until she got to the door then yelled at her from where I was hidden under tomato trees. Apparently she was looking for me, not headed inside. She ran towards me then, gasping out of breath, and saying…   something.

It took awhile before I could catch it. There was a rainbow. With the misty rain coming down in bright sunshine that wasn’t surprising. They had found the end of it though! Come quick, we could catch it. Looking around I could see it. There at the edge of the stackyard, into the cornfield. The rainbow came right to the ground. There was no way I was running that far. Instead I ran the other way to the shed.

On the fourwheeler I picker her up then we went for her brother. All children gathered, we took off after that rainbow.

It was no longer at the edge of the corn field. We chased it through the middle of the corn, down the sectionline, then stopped on top of a hill to look at it over a friends house, way off at the highway, We were too late. Too late didn’t make it any less fun.Who needs a pot of gold wen we have all the riches we could want right here.

Turning for home the kids asked me to come pick more corn with them.

After a busy day I still had chores that needed done, there were dirty dishes in the sink, and supper to get on the table. I paused with all the reasons I couldn’t on the tip of my tongue.

Sure! I said and we wen off to play in the corn. Some opportunities are to great to let slip by.

 

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