The blizzard uses the flat open prairie to get a good running start at our windbreak. The cedars bob and curtsy while they pickpocket snow from the wind, and hoard the soft-serve snowdrifts in still eddies at their trunks.
Maret, Ella, and I rummage through boxes putting on long underwear, insulated Carhartt coveralls, balaclavas, gloves over glove liners, hats over other hats, our heaviest boots over our warmest socks. We bury ourselves in snowdrifts of clothes just so we can go out and do chores.
The day is like a solid block of ice. Hard. Dull. Shadowless. And gray blue. Minus thirty with wind chill. Snow falls, glances off things, it lifts and blows. Spindrift dances everywhere, gets in your eyes and nose.
Maret walks around and around a fresh alfalfa bale in a slow orbit unwrapping the netting. The horses are hungry, twitchy, and impatient. Chief throws his head while she is pitching hay and catches her on the chin, giving her a bloodied fat lip. Maret's eyes will blacken slightly in the coming days.
The cows herd up tight together; heads down, asses to the wind. The chickens refuse to go out. They huddle in their coop under a heat lamp, happy with their small false sun. They'll wait.
Wind screed snow flattens the landscape, fills in the low spots. Borrow ditches fill solid. The stock tank is half buried. The blue tank heater is first extinguished, then packed so solid with snow that will take me a good hour to empty it out and relight it. The water is encrusted by thick ice now and I wail on it with an axe to make drinking hole for the cows. Droplets of water splash on my coveralls and instantly freeze into gaudy, icy rhinestones.
One horse comes in lame, his hind leg sliced open. Maret cleans the wound and covers it with hot honey. The next day, after the blizzard has stopped, I drive the barbed wire fence and find a break where he likely hooked the wire, then spooked and ran. Stretch and splice. Nail the wire to the posts. I'm the opposite of wind: I put things back together. On the far side of Ahlmer's pasture I get stuck in a drift and a neighbor pulls me out.
Postscript: Three weeks later, the borrow ditches are still long white ribbons of crusted snow. Windbreaks trees, telephone poles, and fence posts cast shadows that lay across these drifts like indecipherable blue calligraphy, as though the sky was trying to tell us its side of the story.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 04:29PM
Reader Comments (3)
Fat chickens, fat lips, fat farmers (do to the layers of clothing of course), fat lot of fun, but at least there is a mound of snow left for Ella to claim
Takes me two days of winter "snow" days to finally catch up on your lovely words and images. Thanks for your time and effort.
As we run to the very close barn to feed the two (only two) horses we think of you taking care of your cows. Hope all are as happy as can be in these nasty conditions. I can say these are not the snow days I dreamt of...
John, did you just call me fat?
Lois, Thanks for dropping by. It is nasty out indeed, and your horses appreciate your sacrifice. Try to enjoy your snow days.