Monday, December 29, 2008, 21:08
A March Day
I must have missed January and February somehow. The weather here at Rural Route 2 on Monday was very much like an early March day. Quite blustery with a wind gusting to 30 mph out of the west.
No, wait. The wind was out of the north/northwest.
Twasn't after all. It was out of the east.
Oh, no. That's right. It was the south.
That is to say -- the wind was switching directions every so often. It was predominantly out of the west/northwest, but there were those odd gusts out of the east and south. There was a bright blue sky too with puffy white clouds. It seemed very much like an early March day.
Unfortunately, it was just as I feared about the ice. We did not get any freezing rain. But the temperature dropped quickly enough on Saturday that the ice turned to glare slick ice. I barely made it down the sloped path to Isabelle's pasture to bring her grain. I knew I had to do something before I attempted to bring her hay and water. It was just such glare ice that I could barely stand up.
So, I hauled a wheelbarrow of hay chaff out of the barn and sprinkled it over the path. That helped enormously to make it so I could walk without falling down. I also covered the path leading to Kajun's pasture fence. When the weather is nice, I dump his grain out on the ground for him to eat. Since there's snow (and now ice), he can lick around all he wants, and he doesn't fling grain and waste it.
When Kajun eats out of his box in the barn, he often turns his head and looks this way and that while he's chewing, and then he's slobbering grain around. I suppose his teeth are not what they used to be. He IS in his late 20s. His teeth are not so bad that he's dropping hay while he eats, though, so that's a good thing. Mostly when he eats in the barn, I think he takes bites that are too big for him to chew efficiently. If he would just slow down a little, I think it would help.
Once I had finished feeding the horses Saturday, I spent a couple of hours hauling hay chaff out of the barn and covering my paths around the yard. We've got about 300 feet worth of paths going down to the barn and out to the road and around the house.
You know it's slippery when the wheelbarrow won't stay put on a slope. In some places, when I set it down, the wheelbarrow was either trying to run away from me, or it was trying to run over me, depending on whether it was pointed downhill or uphill.
At one point, when I came out of the barn with another wheelbarrow of chaff, the path leading up to the back of the house where I had already sprinkled chaff was filled with Slate Colored Juncoes, pecking around to see what they could find.
The air temperature Monday afternoon was right around the freezing mark. But with all of the strong wind, the sun wasn't quite strong enough to melt much of the ice on the driveways or the paths. I fear we will be stuck with the ice now until March or April.
My old Morgan-Arab cross, Kajun, had a very bad moment Monday morning. While he was eating his grain by the fence, a strong gust of wind blew around the barn out of the north and sent an empty water buck clattering down the path toward him.
Kajun wasted no time looking to see what the bucket would do or where it would stop. He didn't even take time to snort. In one leap, he was very nearly in the next township. I went over and picked up the bucket and set it in the barn. Only when he could no longer see it and knew it was not a threat did he come back to finish his grain. He wasn't entirely comfortable coming back, but he really didn't want to miss out on eating the rest of his grain, either.
LeAnn R. Ralph
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Saturday, December 27, 2008, 14:41
Funny Weather
It's been funny weather here at Rural Route 2. Christmas morning it was six degrees below zero Fahrenheit. At midnight on December 26, it was 38 degrees. Light rain and mist fell all day Friday. At night, it turned foggy.
All of the snow on the driveway has turned to ice. Friday evening, Randy hauled hay chaff from the barn to put down on both the upper and lower driveway to try to keep it from being so slick.
The weather forecast says we will get freezing rain Saturday afternoon followed by snow. I am hoping that it rains and then turns to snow without a sharp drop in temperature in between. If it snows when the ice is still wet, then the snow will stick to the ice and make it not so slippery. If the ice freezes "dry" before it starts to snow, watch out. We won't be able to walk anywhere -- and we are certainly not going to be able to drive out of the driveway.
It would be nice if it would pick a temperature and stay there. Something like 25 during the day and 5 or 10 at night would be nice. But so far this winter, we've alternated between windchills far below zero and then warm enough to melt the snow.
I am just hoping that when we get the freezing rain, it doesn't coat everything with an inch of ice. We'll have real trouble if tree branches start breaking off and there's an inch of ice on the road. Especially if the temperature drops below zero again. Before this, it was so cold that the salt/sand put out on the roads did little good. It has to be about 10 degrees or in the teens before the salt/sand will melt the ice and snow.
Well, one thing about it. The weather provides quite a lot of variety in the winter. You just never know WHAT you're going to find when you wake up in the morning.
LeAnn R.Ralph
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My new book, The Coldest Day of the Year, is now available.
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