Enough is Enough!!

Still Snowed Under

Even as I write, it is snowing outside. This little "cliipper" is not supposed to amount to much, but the insult is obvious.  Nature is doing her best to bring us to our knees.

And, as noted, the horses are already up to their knees in the snow. The path to the barn is shoveled but still is about six inches of semi-packed snow underneath. The driveway is a wreck of bumps of snow interspersed with patches of bare pavement all soon to be covered again with another inch or so.

For one brief moment this morning, I saw the sparkle of snow diamonds on the piles where yesterday's dusting had fallen. It was quite crystalline and under normal circumstances would have been beautiful.  But, enough is enough.

And the worse news?  There is another huge storm brewing in the middle of the country that seems to have plans to dive down and then come up the Atlantic coast to batter us again in the middle of next week.

The even more insulting factor?  They are calling it the "Groundhog Day Storm."  For those of you abroad, Groundhog Day is an invented holiday here in the USA where formally dressed handlers pull a hibernating groundhog (see pic) from its den.  If the critter sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If it does not, then we will have an early Spring.  (Spring will still be six weeks away, but supposedly, it will arrive before its time.)  So Groundhog Day is one of the first welcoming celebrations that winter is bound to end sooner or later.  Talk about an insult to interfere with the festivities by holding a blizzard in its honor.....

This is Punxsutawney Phil, the most famous groundhog weather predictor of all. 

My horses just seem to be standing around doing nothing of interest. I mean, after all, how long can you wade around in two feet of snow and still have a good time?  I just keep trying to make sure they have hay and that their stalls are picked out.  The stalls are not perfectly clean, as they keep going in and out during the day, dragging the snow in and dragging their hay out.

I am going to have one big mess to clean up when it does thaw.  The run in areas are pretty trashed on both sides of the barn.  I did clean the manure out of the west side a week ago, but I needs a cleaning again, and I will have to dig a path to get to the manure pile if I do it before the next storm hits.

The east run in is wet, since the snow has blown in there and melted twice already.  There is wet hay, some bedding, and some manure mixed in as footing.  Again, there is simply no way to clean it up right now.  And I have a new manure pile about 15 feet from the barn as that was as far as I could get the wheelbarrow to dump it--again without digging a LONG path to the other manure pile.  I figure I'll be able to move this fairly easily with the tractor once the snow melts, but again, for now, it will have to stay.

When they talk about an area being paralyzed by a snowstorm, they are not exaggerating.  I shudder to think what's going to happen if we do get hit again.  I am running out of coping options.

Not sure how to credit this photo, but it's been posted on Facebook by some of my friends. It seems an appropriate close to this blog.