Sunday, February 24, 2013

Snow, love hate relationship

It is simple.  Snow and I have a love hate relationship.  I love to hate it.  There are only two good things about snow.  It provides moisture for the ground and it makes things look nice.  Every thing else about snow, I hate.  The ice that forms as it starts to melt and refreeze.  How you have to dig everything out.  Tractors getting stuck.  Having to walk through it sinking to my hips to check the animals.  How the fences get covered and a five foot fence becomes a two foot fence, or less.  You cant open gates.  Cars sliding on roads.  Any one of these can be annoying.  For me, the worst is the tractor.  We currently feed large round bales.  The tractor is the only thing strong enough to move them.  Well, stuck tractors means unable to feed properly, unable to plow driveway, and unable to pull out our own vehicles when they get stuck.  Next it is the fences.  They are five foot fences, we should not have issues with them going OVER the fences.  But guess what.  That is exactly what they are doing.  Stepping right over it.  Luckily the horses don't try to step over it.  The cows are easier to get back in.  The gates are frozen in and so much snow on each side you have to dig them out.  That takes time to dig out each gate and that can kill your back.  Imagine a 16 foot gate you have to dig out enough so that the tractor can get in to put bales in for the animals.  Then you just hope that as you drive the 14 ft tractor through the 16 ft fence it doesn't slide into the fence or secondary gate.

With all of this it makes you rethink how you are doing things.  How to change it so that the snow won't be such an effect on your daily life.  So, here is our order of business   Build covered hay storage lofts in each pasture and stock them with small square bales.  If we just have to walk out and throw hay off into a manger below then we will not have to worry about a tractor even starting, much less getting stuck.  Also, the milking animals are too far out.  Their pasture is 21 acres and across the dam.  Hiking through four feet of snow to go get a cow and then hike back twice a day is pretty hard on the legs.  Especially when you have many other chores to do.  So, we are making a small "winter" pasture up close off the barn for the winter months. When the snow falls we will now move the milking cows up into this small pasture.  Once it is melted we will open the gates and move them back to their summer pasture.  We designed it so that the pasture will have large gates that just stay open all summer to prevent any obstruction of movement.  Once we do the changes then I hope we can just enjoy the winter and the snow.  Maybe take up cross country skiing!  Then photos like this will just bring back good memories instead of having to stand in snow up to my hip!  Happy winter folks.


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