When will it end ?

Help !  It won't stop snowing and we are running out of milk...
One of us may have to harness up the dogs and sled into town for supplies...

Who knew, when this winter started that we would experience one of the snowiest winters we've had for years.   2005 we had five feet of snow...and that was bad but this is far worse....It snows everyday, it's frigging frigid out side with day time highs of -20....and there's a wind...it blows nearly everyday... Robert is trudging around out there up to his ass in snow...literally...he has to just walk where he has been with the tractor, he barely has time to keep everyone bedded with straw never mind move snow... the road maintainer has been by once in the past two weeks so there is nearly two feet of snow on the road again...and the only traffic we have going by is the school bus...when it finally gets too bad for them to go the maintainer will be back... We slipped and slid our way into town yesterday, we were out of milk, cheques needed to be deposited and calving supplies picked up ...but it was bad, bad, bad.... really bad... I am so glad that Robert insisted on driving in, rather than my going myself..even though he did make us go in the smaller farm truck and once we had picked up the parcel with the Angus tags (a 14" x 14" box) two 4L of milk some onions, lettuce and broccoli, three doz eggs and two bags of puffed wheat cereal...I had to get into the truck first then he basically piled the groceries on top of me...since the truck only is a single cab with no back seat... and stuff would have either flown out of the back of the truck box or froze on the way home...he then met a friend in the grocery store who asked us to come to her place for tea and he agreed which meant I had to get out and then back into the truck all over again...when we got to her place in town...he came around to my side to remove the bags of produce from my lap while I tried to get my right foot on the ground...then lift my left leg, which was numb by this time, and clear the two 4L jugs of milk on the floor between my feet...I cleared the jugs but my foot got caught in the loop handle of the plastic grocery bag and tripped me up, throwing me off balance on the slippery sidewalk lost my footing with my right foot...Roberts hands were full of the bags of produce and he was waiting for me to get out so he could put them on the seat...and down I went...nearly face first right there on the sidewalk where all the neighbours could see...I had to pick myself up and brush off tons of snow...I was covered from head to toe...hahaha  cussing the whole time of course...and then we ended up taking the produce inside with us so it wouldn't freeze....  what a time...

This friend is the one whose daughter is in a bad situation with an ex husband who is fanatically religious and swears god speaks to him...he wants the two kids to visit him every two weeks and she is afraid to let them...anyway, on new years day...her 13 yr old daughter ran away from home, rather than go and stay over night with her brother at the fathers place...she explained it all in the note she left...so they had all been pretty stressed out and we sat and listened to her story...about her granddaughters running away.. I think she needed to tell someone, so we were glad to lend a shoulder.

When we got home and were carrying in the bags of groceries...Robert (who had shovelled the sidewalk that morning and didn't clean the steps off) misjudged where the edge of the step was, went to step up to the door and fell flat on his face on the deck, arms and legs sprawled out and groceries scattered everywhere....as a matter of fact he brought in the two jars of stewed prunes this morning, he'd found them in the snow bank outside...frozen of course. I asked him, when he fell if he was alright...and he said...yes..nothing damaged but my dignity...I laughed and said join the crowd...




my Xmas light trees stand six feet tall but all we can see is the top two feet.



and it just kept snowing...all evening, all night and still today...and not lightly but great big giant flakes so heavy we can't see the trees across the field... It is a complete white out out there....

The other morning Robert came in for breakfast and said "hey, since your in such a good mood this morning I have a funny story to tell you"  and I said "oh"   then he proceeded to tell me how he had done his tractor feeding the day before and forgot to close a gate ...Now, we keep our cows up near the barn when they are this close to calving and so they browse on a bit of green feed during the day and he fills the feeders with hay but keeps them out of that pen until about 11 pm...when he checks them then lets them into the feed...so they eat most of the night and usually don't calf until early morning.. it really does make a difference in the number of calves born during the night. any way the gate he forgot to close was the one that he enters to put the feed into the feeders...so that night when he let the cows into the pen where the feeders are through another gate...he didn't notice that the gate on the far side of the pen was wide open...but the cows did.. so sometime between 11pm and 2 am...the whole herd of cows all 107 of them left the pen walked out the far driveway onto the road...up the road a bit towards our other quarters of land, thought better of it, turned around and came down the road, passing the drive way they had exited from and coming towards the house driveway...where they decided they had had enough adventure for one night and came into the yard...up the driveway past the barn and back into the pen where the feed was....so when Robert went out at 2 am and slowly walked around the feed pen looking at the back ends of the cows to spot anyone who might be calving, got to the far side of the pen, noticed the open gate with all the tracks heading out of it along with the odd spot of manure he closed the gate and followed the tracks, and discovered that the cows had been out on the road.... NOW, you might be thinking man that R is one lucky S, O.B. and he is....very lucky... if someone had been driving along and hit one of those cows with their vehicle we could have gotten our asses sued...and lost everything... this kind of thing is nothing new for him .... he forgets to close gates all the time...bulls get out and broke all the branches off my favorite spruce tree here in the yard a couple of years ago..because he had left the gate open, forgot about it being open and let the bulls into that pen while he bedded their corral...and an open gate is like a magnet for cows.... you can drive onto a quarter of land and leave the gate open thinking it is safe...there isn't a cow in sight for as far as the eye can see....and by the time you come back to the gate the bags are out on the road...they have radar...I think...anyway, Robert is always getting caught being lazy... but just last summer he wasn't so lucky...he had gone to town for parts and I was mowing the lawn...I had just finished and gone into the house for a cold drink to enjoy while sitting on the deck...when I stepped outside with my ice filled glass...there were three cows with calves about 10 ft away from the house...the cows were pawing in the pile of peat Robert had dumped there a few days before for our landscaping project that was in process...before I could get my work shoes back on those C's (bad word) had completely levelled a six foot  high pile of soil. it was scattered everywhere....and they had rubbed on the tiny little crab apple tree we had planted there until it was pulled out of the hole and layed on the driveway with it's roots exposed...I called the dogs (who were sound asleep on  the other side of the deck) and the three of us chased the cows back into the barn yard and I closed the gate that transitions from my yard to the barn yard...and then walked through the barn yard looking for how the cows got out in the first place...and I found it...another gate left open...so, I am not so surprised anymore when animals get out ... but I do still get mad...hahahaha poor Robert....let's hope this was the only one he leaves open this winter. They might have gotten into the neighbours feed yard and eaten his 100. per bale, hay...that would have hurt..

We heard some shocking news two days ago...Robert had managed to drive down to the mail box and while he was there he stopped and chatted to our neighbour who was grinding grain nearby...and he told Robert that our other neighbour's wife was in the University hospital in a comma. On new years day she and her husband and two daughters (ages 11/9) had been out for a horse back ride. Now they are very horse enthusiastic...he won Canadian team roping a few years ago and is a  silver smith whose buckles and western style jewellery is sold around the world, she grew up on horse and the two girls are junior barrel racers...they host junior rodeo's at their farm a couple of times a year, so she knows what she is doing on a horse...anyway, they had ridden back into the yard after their ride (it was not bad  here that day -8 but windy) and as she was dismounting the horse spooked she was thrown under the horse and it reared when it was coming down with its front feet she was hit on the left side of the head...her face was split open and there was tons of blood apparently...he sent the kids for towels and blankets...while he called 911 but we don't get very good cell phone reception here and he had to go to the house to call .... the ambulance took her to our local hospital where they stabilized her and wanted to fly her to the city by STARS...air ambulance but it was too windy...so they had to transport her by ambulance into the city...the wind was blowing snow around and the traffic was crazy being new years day..shopping and all in the city...so she is still in a comma, not medically induced...but she does respond to pain stimulation...hot and cold sensation...so the family has been advised about possible brain damage...she has extensive swelling of the brain but they have already done surgery to replace her horribly shattered skull with metal plates...and say it is just a matter of time...to wait and see if she is going to wake up...

 On another note....we had our first live baby born last night...a second calver...had a little tiny black heifer...Robert had stayed in the house a bit longer to watch the news , so she was a bit chilled and the tips of her ears were frozen...but he warmed her up and dried her ears...got her to suck mommies teat and she's good to go...we'll pop a tag in her ear tomorrow before she gets kicked outside into the cruel cold snowy world...but I am sure Robert will spoil the crap out of the calves again this year by closing the calf shelters in with plastic and putting heat lamps in there...they get so toasty they don't want to come out during the cold nights to nurse and their moms stand in front of the sheds and bellow all night...so Robert doesn't get any sleep...ahahahaha it used to be me that happened to so I figure it is just great that he has to now live with the consequences of his spoiling them....instead of me.  TaDa.

Well I should finish this and get back to doing the year end books...ugh...I have been working on them for the past two days...and finally had to read Robert the riot act about not bringing me all the receipts....he is notorious for leaving them in the truck, in the barn, in his bathroom or in the bags....hahahah I know it sounds like he is my cross to bear but his good attributes  more than make up for the less than stellar bits...