After the Storm

We awoke to blowing wind and 4 inches of heavy wet snow. Mark had the snow plow already on the tractor ready to pull out and actually started plowing while it was still dark. Below he is getting prepared to go outside in his plowing attire.

 He wanted to get a head start and since the tractor has lights felt he could at least get the drive to mom's and her area done before heading across the dam to Rachel's house. 

 We had a big limb come down across the drive going to the house. 

 With the wind gusts hitting 43 miles an hour last night that wasn't the only branch that came down. A big tree came down going into Valiant's field, hit another tree and broke a big branch off that one too.

We will leave that for another day as Valiant and Galena are locked off the field for a while. Below is the table on our patio with a 5 gallon bucket.

 The evergreen tree below was weighed down with that heavy snow.

 It was such a pretty picture looking over to the pond that I took a few of them before getting to work. 

 When Mark finished with the plowing around Meisterville, he headed back to do ours and pushed the big branch into the yard as he plowed that drive. 

 I moved the chair to get a better picture to show a full 4 inches had piled up on the chair and table. Later we heard Peoria got 4 to 5 inches but we missed the worst, the Galesburg area got 11 inches. We are amazed at this November storm. In my 63 years of life I can never remember this much snow in November. With this storm and the other snow coming earlier we are already over 8 inches for the month. 

 Karin came and helped get the side door to the arena and stall barn open. We put Zalena's colt in a stall and will leave him there until tomorrow afternoon once it warms up a bit. I have him on the monitor and he is happily munching away at his hay. The other horses were all smart enough to stay in their shelters during the snow.  The other weanlings were having fun rolling in the snow. I didn't have my camera or there would have been lots of pictures of that. They were dropping one at a time and thoroughly enjoying their roll. When they would get up they would be white until they shook.  Mike and Diane made it back from Gulf Shores this morning. Diane went right to the office and Mike went right out to Middle Grove to check on the horses there.  He reported they still had 2 bales out that had not been touched and the lakes are still open for water. The bad news out there was the power line was down. Mike needs to be able to plug his tractor in plus that line is also used for the heater on the automatic waterer. Hopefully the power company can get that repaired quickly we are expecting a deep freeze tonight. Mike drove all the way back to get a generator. 
I did lot of shoveling today and will be ready for a good nights sleep tonight.