At this time of year we are watching the weather constantly in the hope that we actually get some precipitation, but also to plan our logistics to ensure we don’t get caught out by any changes in weather without being appropriately prepared. By late last week, as we watched this week’s forecast, it became obvious that the predicted storms would actually show up and bring some much needed precip with them. Quite often the opposite is true, where a front is predicted a week away but by the time it gets here it’s fizzled out to nothing and not one drop makes a successful landing here at Skyelark.
As predicted, we got a dusting of snow overnight on Saturday night and it has kept coming since. The snow that fell on Sunday evening was in slow, dream-like flakes and Isla didn’t miss the chance to catch some on her tongue and I enjoyed the silence that the blanket of snow was creating - no wind, no freeway traffic, just a calming winter’s evening.
With the storm expected to get “serious” by Tuesday afternoon, we spent the bulk of our time on Monday bedding animals down, staging feed and preparing for at least two days of being snowbound, or being ‘snawed-in’, as I would prefer to say.
Tuesday morning was nice enough, the roads open, hoses not yet frozen. We had discussed locking the hens up for the day and not letting them out as the predicted high winds and late afternoon snow would likely confuse them and cause them to hunker down in-situ and not go back into their huts to roost for the night. However, we did let them out for the day, and consequences be what they will at least they would get out for their usual constitutional!
The wind arrived mid-afternoon and soon so did the snow, sideways. Funneled between Mount Shasta and Mount Eddy, the south winds come barreling down to us and on Tuesday they were predicted to gust up to 70mph. Normally we have noticed that it is windiest in the hours or days leading up to the precipitation event, and by the time it actually starts raining the wind has thankfully subsided giving way to a more manageable breeze, but not today. The sideways snow started at around 4pm and was still coming long into the night. I spent the latter part of the day battling the wind and snow and crawling around under the hen huts grabbing handfuls of chicken legs and putting them back inside the safety and warmth of their huts - a very necessary but miserable task given the low temperature and drifting snow. I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to catch the last one, which I did, and came in with the knowledge that, even though it was a whiteout blizzard all our animals had a warm and safe spot for the night - even our guardian dogs. Bree, recovering from her spay operation earlier that day tucked up in her crate in the mud room, Bean in the hut with the ducks and goats, and Ben, who showed some unexpected intelligence, by actually sleeping in the dogloo I put out for him in the field with the hens.
When we woke this morning (Wednesday) the wind had gone, leaving behind waves of snow all over the ranch. In some spots it was barely an ice-covered dusting, in others, waist deep drifts blocking gates and hiding shin-busting farm implements. Water troughs were filled with snow, the door to the barn blocked by a six-foot drift, the ATV under its own white fluffy blanket. I took a quick walk - well,as quick as one can in snowshoes - around the sheep and pigs to check no-one was stuck upside down in a drift. Luckily, everyone seemed ok, except for Michelle Ollama who seemed slightly more agitated than normal, and old Stumpy who didn’t surface from her hut until very late in the morning.
With the ATV out of commision, Lex and I fed and watered the beasts by trudging buckets of hot water around to break ice, found and dug out feed troughs by clunking a shovel through the 2’ of snow in the pig pens, and breaking trails for the sheep so they could find their water. We also set up water stations in the hen huts as we didn’t let them out, fearful of a repeat of the previous evening’s chicken wrangling. It took the majority of the day, and some extra energy to get the very basic of husbandry chores done today, but again, we are inside and warm and we know that our efforts have kept our animals as comfortable as they can be in such weather.
It’s Wednesday evening, and from where I write I can see the lights of the Interstate, the trucks again almost all stationary except for the plows and gritters. The earlier excitement and activity of stuck semi-trucks, directing lost travellers, feeding and watering hungry animals and trudging through waist-deep snow has again subsided to slow reflection and a quiet farm. We enjoy these rare snow days. The immediacy of our animal’s reliance upon us as farmers is at its most clear, the work of the farm is at its bucket-slopping hardest, yet the beauty of the place where we live is very much at its peak.
Throughout the day, I was asking myself how we would cope if this were the norm, if six feet snow drifts blocked our barn door every day? The answer is, we just would. We would just get dressed in our thickest woolens and alternate between our two pairs of snow boots because that’s what is required of us for our animals and for our customers, and because, as farmers, we actually love it!
