Life is a beautiful adventure.
It started like the snow in a snow-globe, turned topsy turvy by eager hands. Yesterday’s sky dropped a mesmerizing whirl of big, beautiful flakes like downy feathers, falling straight and true like so many stars, then falling thicker, then accumulating.
A snowfall settles like an enchantment. Dazzling the eyes, the snow transforms. It really is splendid, the way the mundanest of things suddenly become things of surpassing beauty, behind a shimmering curtain of snowflakes. Even a clothespin – a clothespin! – has an otherwordly delight about it, under a dainty cap of snow. So soon, the lines will be heavy with freshly washed laundry, not with snow.
With painterly precision, with spell-binding beauty, the homely ponderosa is made resplendent in a wonderland of white, even as the light is dimming from the sky. Things rusted and worn take on a beauty not their own.
The drab brown of worn out fields and tired earth are covered over with the bright promise of relief, of spring, of the so-needed moisture. Parched earth is mercifully given drink and spirits rise at small answers to prayer. A whirling spring snowfall like this one elevates and cleanses and heals and refreshes and restores.
We walked our normal evening loop, the snow plastering us from head to toe. The snowflakes were sweet on my tongue and easy to catch. I wasn’t wearing a cap with a brim and the snow caught in my eyelashes and flew straight into my eyes and melted all over my face. But the air was kind with coming spring, not bitter with the bite of winter. Even the animals felt it. The pups raced around with insane energy, unphased, unchilled. The horses galloped hill after hill, turning to face me, then running, turning then running, the snowy energy coursing in their veins as well.
And so the sun set on an altered world, asleep under a downy blanket, to dream of spring.
Oh, these winter days after a storm. We woke up to a world transformed under the clearest of clear skies. The wind, worn out overnight, gave way to a peaceful calm, but not until leaving those whimsical reminders of its presence, strangely and wildly sculpted drifts of snow and ice, sparkling wickedly in the unmasked winter sunlight. The sky is so blue it looks ages away, yet somehow seems I could reach up and touch it. Not a cloud to be spied. The snow a blinding sheen. Trees laden with icy burdens on every branch, which occasionally slip from their shoulders and disappear in a shimmering cloud.
Our footprints from yesterday were blown away and filled in. Our slash piles have reduced to smoldering heaps of ash. Animals came through the storm unscathed. No calves arrived, which is a blessing in this cold.
I love these days, when 10 degrees feels just right. The relief is apparent, watching the animals move around more comfortably, from the pups to the chickens to the larger livestock. The misery everyone slogged through yesterday has melted away as the temps have crept a little further above zero. Without the biting wind or the stinging snow, it feels oddly springlike.
I love these days, these storms that are gone almost as soon as they arrive, bringing some moisture to the parched earth, reminding us that it still is winter but that springtime isn’t too far off.
I love these days.
Oh, I love a snow day. A coffee-drinking, chili-eating, pile-burning day. Heavy skies, whirling snow, wading through knee-deep drifts and retracing steps a short time later only to find the tracks already blown in.
Everything is harder, everything takes longer, your toes and fingers freeze, and your face, the only part of you showing, gets nipped hard by the cold. Sneaky little trickles of snow find the impossible gaps between scarf and hood. Negative windchills require a delicate balance of enough layers to keep you warm in the gale-force winds and flying snow while not causing extra exertion and resulting perspiration. Bundle up enough to be warm and you’re suddenly wearing so many layers you’re sweating your way down a hill.
But truly, I love a snow day.
We went out first thing and lit off half a dozen piles, a jolly way to spend a frigid morning. I’ve always loved a good pile burning day! We had been anticipating a snow storm for months, hoping to get some of the slash piles burned up that are sprinkled all over in the timber, and Brad got excited when he saw not just the snow but the stretch of cold temps in the forecast. So out we went, armed like arsonists with gasoline and matches and old bale net wrap. The pups all came with us, a desperate attempt on our part to start wearing them out. It took approximately 4 hours of cold weather yesterday for them to get stir crazy and last night they were impossible. So we hauled them out in the single digits and they got a grand 5 minutes of running around before the silly things were shivering. They didn’t ask to get out of the truck after that. Every time we got out to light a pile, they spread out over all the seats, and every time we got back in they were less inclined to move out of the way, preferring for us to half sit on them instead.
The piles lit beautifully. I realized after pile four that I involuntarily released a sound, something like “Hah!,” every time the lit match hit the gasoline-soaked net wrap and whooshed into flame. But it is just so satisfying! I could watch the fire for hours, flames licking up ravenously into the snow-heavy air, creating up drafts that suck the smoke back into the pile in a volatile whirlwind. Mesmerizing. The bulls also found it satisfying, apparently, since they cozily warmed their little backsides, eventually wandering away and giving a musical shake to the icicles hanging all along their ribs.
Not much activity outside the chicken coop today. Not much, as in none. The chickens flatly refused to leave the coop and laid their eggs in creative places, like inside the feed hopper and while sitting on their roost. However, between Brad checking them on his way up from checking heifers and my own dashes down to the coop, not a single egg froze and the chickens laid a baker’s dozen, not too shabby for a day with highs of 1 degree. One glorious degree.
A lot of time was spent either trying to stay warm or trying to get warm again, getting as much done outside as we could yet trying to do as little as possible in the frigid temps. I rolled a whole bunch of seed starting pots while listening to a podcast, and worked on seed starting plans, figuring out what to start when. Peppers and some greens will be some of the first things to get planted, first thing next week when my seed germination mats get here! Someone likes to keep this house super cold in the winter. My chick order is ready to go next time I stop in to the ag supply store, hopefully tomorrow if the roads are good enough to run to town to teach.
Something about cold and snow make a person dream of springtime. But one glance at the thermometer or the drifted world outside is a keen reminder that winter isn’t over yet and the cold and the mud and the snow are here for awhile yet.
Muddy pawprints smear the linoleum in the kitchen (thank goodness for linoleum), which I have resigned to enjoying clean for half an hour at a time, the intervals between growing longer and longer. The mud room looks like it was ransacked, littered with so many pairs of muck boots and coveralls and coats that it looks like half a dozen people live here, and random gloves because the puppies squirreled their mates away. You can’t even cross the six feet of mudroom floor without stepping on something – Boots, hats, mud puddles, scarves that got away from us, dog toys, a puppy or three, maybe a cat, and I tripped or something as I opened the door and managed to nail myself right in the forehead, leaving a beautiful goose egg. The whole house smells vaguely of smoke from smoky (and perhaps slightly scorched) articles of clothing drying here and there. The pups are finally sleeping and haven’t made a peep in quite awhile. The afternoon walk up the hill in -4 degrees must have convinced them that we were serious.
Oh yes. I love a snow day!
The winter storm is blowing in! What a change from this morning. I stomped out in bibs first thing and immediately overheated, it was so balmy out.
We spent the morning shuffling cows and yearlings up north, corralling the yearlings for the storm and moving the cows about 2 miles into the calving pasture. It was beautiful weather, only starting to get chilly when we got close to wrapping up. The sky grew unsettled and it was as if everything, not just us, was anticipating something. Everything, that is, except the pups. Bess was busy learning how to be a cowpuppy with Brad, while Josie took advantage of the gentle lilting (no, it isn’t) motion of the fourwheeler to take a nap on my lap. She only fell off once.
We buzzed back up home, got a quick bite to eat, and headed out once more to get the cows on our end moved closer for the storm, and even moving the bulls into a more sheltered pasture. When we headed out after lunch, a little moisture was starting to blow in, quickly turning to sleet that stung like needles as we flew around on ATVs getting the shuffling done. The bulls were a little extra feisty with the weather change and gave us a quick and underappreciated rodeo.
The stinging sleet was accompanied by settling fog, obscuring the tops of the trees as we moved the last bunch of cows. As we got back up to the yard and put the fourwheelers away, the biting sleet turned suddenly to whirling snow, the distance disappearing from sight behind a whiteout.
The chickens are tucked in for the cold snap, with a fresh layer of sawdust to keep them dry. I moved their feed hoppers inside their snug coop to make feeding easier on them. It really feels like walking into a concrete bunker, as silent as it is when the door closes behind me! Lucky chickens.
Everything is coated with fresh white. I’m watching the snow whip this way and that outside the picture windows in the living room, listening to the wind whistle comfortably around the eaves, and ordering the last of my garden seeds. Maybe I’ll roll some newspaper seed pots and brainstorm my flower garden. The cozy aroma of bread baking is wafting through the house and the pups are playing hard and sleeping hard by turns in the mud room. Brad is doing some final chaining up of tires down in the shop. We have water for drinking and oil in the lanterns, the generators are ready to go and livestock have all been fed. The temps are dropping, and are a good thirty degrees colder than they were at lunchtime. We’ll keep praying for moisture and bracing for the cold, thankful for a warm home and a snow storm.
So it begins.
Song Dog Journal 