The beginning of March we had very strong, gale force winds hit the Upper Peninsula from the east. Since Lake Superior has no ice this year these winds produced a lovely snow machine which proceeded to dump more than 36 inches of snow in blowing layers over our homestead. Paths that had been religiously shovelled all winter to our four barns had to be abandoned and snowshoed over to insure we kept the barn doors clear and enough paddock space open for our very pregnant ewes and does to get out and exercise.
It was somewhat disheartening to see areas that had so very little snow(which for us was like a summer vacation)suddenly disappear under glacial drifts, but we perservered and the sheep were out within 36 hours eating their hay in their paddocks despite the fences being completely covered over. The sun came out, the temperature rose and we started the slow meltdown of last week.
At first we just continued to boot walk over the pathways, since they were packed enough to handle our weight. But two days ago when the temperatures rose above 50 degrees and the nighttime temps failed to go below 32 I knew it was either shovel or have a tough spring of falling through knee-deep snow & slush. It took us two days to completely shovel out all the paths including the one to the stream, but we are now back to working order and eagerly awaiting the first lambs/kids the end of this month.
I would have taken some photos of all this but I was a bit too busy just living it. And the folks in upstate NY totally negated what little snow we had with their ten feet or more.
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