Now that it feels like spring is close, I think I can start to talk about it.
‘It’ being this crazy winter.
Even the open prairie feels claustrophobic these days. It’s hard to move, and that is not going to get easier during the melt. It is better right now than it will be for a while. It will be weeks and weeks until we can drive around the yard without making ruts or getting stuck.
But we’ve made it. We didn’t run out of hay like we feared (and like so many other farmers have). We didn’t even have deer consuming our bales, like our neighbours did. Our animals fared as well as can be expected, and we’ve gotten used to doing the chores walking between walls of snow and wearing ski goggles when it’s below minus 30 or during a blizzard. In other words, most days!
Since we stopped digging out some of the gates and just walked over them, and since most fences are under drifts, the next few weeks will see animals realizing they can walk free if they choose. Unless we dig trenches along the fences first. Ha, ha.
Now, as the middle-of-May-opening-day deadline seems impossibly close, we waver between optimism that the blizzards and deep freeze are over and disbelief that we will ever see the yard again, never mind have it dry enough to rake.
But we really are thankful for the rhythm of the seasons and much more, and we take great comfort in this:
“While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Winter and summer,
And day and night
Shall not cease.”
Genesis 8:22