And SO It Starts

We had about 2 inches of wet heavy snow during the night. Mark went right to work first shoveling off our patio before heading up to the barn to start on the drives.

We had a relatively warm morning at 33 degrees and wonderful packing snow. This was just perfect to play outside and Joan's kids had fun today helping their snowman GROW.

They were able to finish the igloo and below are a couple pictures of the inside of this big 2 room igloo.

Joan also posted a picture of their snowboarding trip last Monday.

By 10:00 am the wind had changed from west to northwest and was blowing steady at 20 miles and hour with gusts up to 35. This dropped the temperature drastically and by the time I left at 3:30 pm for Middle Grove the thermometer was reading 16 degrees. The wind chill was ferocious. The herd was pretty much all up at the bales enjoying the hay when I arrived.

The first job out at Middle Grove was to check the automatic waterer and thankfully that was working great.

I went around snapping pictures of the horses.  When Hadassah came up I was a little afraid that she may have lost her foal. She is due April 5th and just didn't look very big. Behind her in the picture below is Ripper.

When Hadassah turned to face me it was obvious she was still pregnant. She just carries her foals well.

We have a lady that wanted updated pictures of Lisa and it took a bit to find her. She had some frost on her muzzle which made it easy to identify once the pictures were uploaded on the computer. The two pictures below are both of Lisa. 

Jay Ulm, the man that offered to drive his tractor down to move bales for us arrived just after 4:30 pm and went right to work moving the bales down by the creek which is out of the wind.

He was able to have those bales moved and was driving back by 5:00 pm. We are very thankful he was willing to do this.  If you would like to see the rest of the pictures taken at Middle Grove click HERE. It was only 11 degrees according to my truck on the way home and the wind hadn't calmed down at all. The roads were drifting pretty badly.  Emily and Mitchel were here working Valiant when I arrived home but I was too cold and miserable to stay and watch. It will soon be below zero. Berean has been called off tomorrow as the weather is not going to improve. By Wednesday the news is reporting it will be dangerously cold with -40 to -45 wind chills and our actual temp for the high of the day is only suppose to get up to -12 degrees. BRRRR. I am very thankful to have plenty of hay out for all of the horses.