Edgar Allen Snow

Two nights ago it snowed. It's winter. It happens. My drive home from work Sunday AM was slower than normal , slippery but not terrible. My drive up our lane was more tricky. Our house is perched nicely on top of a small hill. Very convenient when it rains as water drains nicely away from our home. In the winter however, we are the bullseyes every snowstorm aims for. My fault entirely as I am the one who decided on a red roof.

Surrounded by fields on all sides, the wind usually whips up from the south west ( as the raven flies) and blows snow into the the most annoying drifts all around our house and up and down the drive. Keith works hard to keep our nearly 1/4 mile lane clear for the milk truck, milk customers and the irritable wife coming home after a 12 hr night shift. Some times though our Kubota tractor can't do all that needs to be done and we end up driving through the yard in order to make it to the house.

Family and neighbors are surprised too see the snow drifts on our place still in place two days post storm. After all, the highway is clear, but then again we've always been a bit different.

Tonight, more snow is predicted and winds are expected to kick up again tomorrow.  Keith and son Kyle spent a huge part of the day "getting ready." For town folk this might mean stocking the shelves with extra peanut butter and bread but for us it entailed adding lots more bedding to the pig palace, cow chalet, horse mahal and goat cottages. In addition they moved several piles of snow trying to plan which way the snow might drift and thus avoiding (hopefully) our getting trapped on the farm. We have 3 deliveries to Chicago on Thursday which means taking pigs to the locker Wed. so the livestock trailer had to obtained tonight, since the roads are expected to be quite bad tomorrow which if you are still keeping track would be Tuesday.

In addition I made plans with my daughter regarding the grand kids whom I babysit on Mondays and Tuesdays. In the event of bad weather they will not be returned to Pontiac tomorrow night, they will just stay with us...until spring.

In about an hour when I head out to feed calves and pigs, I will double up on hay and water thus hopefully reducing the amount of time we have to be out in the elements tomorrow am. After all this preparation I fully expect the storm and its predicted 7 inches of snow will float innocently by. And THAT will really tick me off.