Snowy morning update

Cliff's awake; he asked, "How much snow did we get?"

I told him there's no way of knowing, since the wind has blown some places totally bare and piled up drifts in others. I don't imagine we got more than two inches.

Before he woke up, I put my coveralls and boots on again and went outside. I took water to thaw the gate-latch. Then I pondered the situation for a while.

Bonnie will usually follow a can of feed anywhere: Did I dare let her out the front door of the barn, which would mean letting her free into the whole wide world, and try coaxing her into the front door of the horse stall so she'd at least be inside with her calf?

That meant getting her out the door on the right, through a snowdrift, and into the sliding door on the left. Without letting her moose of a calf out.

I had success with this project. When Cliff is fully awake, dressed, and caffeined up (another hour, probably), he'll figure out how to free them from their confinement.

This picture, by the way, illustrates why Bonnie can't use the open-face shed. Although the horses tolerate her and her calf pretty well, they're not about to share this small space with cattle. Once we get the sliding barn door open, we'll leave it ajar so Bonnie and Sir Loin can go inside out of this awful wind.

What a morning

Because I wanted to freshen up our milk supply, I took Sir Loin away from his mom last night and shut him behind the sliding door of the horse stall. Because otherwise, he wouldn't leave any milk for me.

I knew it was going to be miserable this morning, but it's only going to get colder; so I figured I'd be wise to get it over with.

If I'd known what I know now, I would have skipped the whole thing and bought a half-gallon of milk at the store.

First of all, the sleet and freezing rain had frozen the chain that secures the gate to the small lot; try as I might, I couldn't loosen it. I could have come to the house to get water to pour on it, but it didn't seem like too big a deal to go around to the front of the barn to get access to the livestock. It turned out to be a bigger deal that I thought, since I ended up wading through three-foot-deep snow drifts.

I put down my bucket with the udder-cleaning towel in it and got a full can of sweet feed for Bonnie, who is usually waiting right at the barn door to get in. This morning, she wasn't. She was behind a shed at the rental trailer, trying to keep out of the strong winds blowing out of the west. When I called her she started bellowing her complaint, and finally came on around.

This is inside the barn.

Poor Bonnie just wanted in.

She really wanted in.

She dived into that feed as though she hadn't eaten in weeks. I got my share of the milk, turned her out, and discovered to my dismay that the sliding door I needed to open to let Sir Loin out was frozen shut. The sleet and freezing rain had gotten in the track. I pounded, I threw my body against it, all to no avail.

Now I'm waiting for Cliff to wake up and help me figure out what to do. Meanwhile, I opened up the door to the milking part of the barn so Bonnie could get out of the wind. I hope she doesn't tear anything up in there.

How's your Christmas going so far?