Blizzard On The Prairie

Today was sunny and cold and our high was only 9 degrees F. But today’s weather was preferable to the weather we had 24 hours ago at this time.

Yesterday, we were visited by a large snowstorm that crawled its way across the midwest. It snowed all day and into the night, and the snow was whipped up into drifts by 30 mph winds. I left early from work and drove carefully home. In some places the wind blew the snow across the prairie into great clouds that made seeing the road at times difficult. But I got home ok.

Later in the afternoon I rode along with Harland as he drove the mile north up to the farm to feed the calves their evening grain. Below is a video (my first!) as we left our driveway and made our way to the farm. The drifts were forming across the road. As we turn into the farm driveway, Harland made a strange noise as we busted through a drift (no, it’s not a burp.) And that’s me heaving a sigh of relief as we came to a stop at the end. 

The picture above is a view of our road today. The video shows the same scene as it looked yesterday.

When we got to the farm, Harland cleaned the snow out of the calves’ feed bunk because if grain is dumped onto the snow, the calves won’t eat all the grain. The next video is of a well dressed Harland dumping the grain into the bunk, and most of the calves eating contentedly. Some of them like to switch positions during feeding. There’s room enough for all, but they’re convinced that their neighbors are getting better grain than they are.

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The calves are now a year old and weigh between 500 and 600 pounds. We had planned on taking them to the livestock sale Monday, and they were to be auctioned off yesterday. The weather forecast changed our plans, so we’ll have them on the farm for at least another week.

This evening we went for a drive to check on the conditions of the roads. Most have been bladed out. Take a look at how high it’s piled up along this road a few miles from our house.

It will take a long time for that to melt off this spring.

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——–> UP NEXT: Winter Sunrise over the prairie.

——–> AND LATER:  A tour of the OZ Museum in Wamego Kansas. Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!

 

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Suzanne

Cattle, corn, wheat, beans, mud, snow, ice, and drought. Plenty of fresh air and quiet. Our life is sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous, but never boring.

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13 Responses

  1. Okay, I’ll just say BRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!! and shut up about my 40 degree day today!! 🙂

  2. Pam K. says:

    Love the videos and hope you use them more! I don’t envy you guys having to get out in the high winds and very low wind chill! I stayed in the last two days here in Nebraska!

  3. Joani says:

    Oh, that looks so COLD. Here in AZ it was 43 and that breeze blew a chill to the bone. I stayed in and stayed warm. The plants R covered tonight cuz it is suppose to be in the lower 20s. Hope U get the calves to market next week.

  4. Sally Bishop says:

    Good job on the videos! We are in the deep freeze but not near the snow. Schools have been on 2 hour delay for two days but everyone is still getting out and around. Stay warm!

  5. Peggy says:

    Great videos. I wouldn’t have liked to drive home on roads like that. Glad you made it through the bad weather. Here in North Carolina there was a warm front that came with rain. Our temps was 71 degrees on my car on the way home from school. Crazy weather!

  6. Becky says:

    Baby it’s cold outside! Hunker down and stay warm. Thanks for sharing the photos and videos. The calves make me homesick for the farm I grew up on. Love those animals. Now I have come full circle and work at a hardware store!

  7. Teresa says:

    It certainly was quite the storm! Glad everyone made it through okay.

  8. Glenda says:

    Started shoveling our driveway around noon. Had a method of sweeping with the round blade shovel that took out the layers in an arc. First to the left, then to the right. Finally got some help from son and ended up close to 5 getting to the street where the grader had to make several tries at getting it swiped. Made it into work this Thursday morning all right.
    We probably had at least a foot and Columbia closer to 17 inches.

    • Suzanne says:

      Hi Glenda,
      Since Kitty is so good and digging around in her litter box, we figured that she should go out and dig out the driveway and sidewalks. She wasn’t keen on the idea though. Wow you guys had a lot more than we did. We only had about 8 inches. Glad you were able to get the driveway cleared with help, and that you made it to work ok.

  9. awwww, I loved the video! awesome! So, that funny sound that Harland made, made me laugh! Also, I really loved watching the calves eat the grain! They are so darn cute and I love how they move around…that cracks me up! I feel like they’re saying “hey buddy, come on, let me get there!”. I also like how sometimes it looked like they were looking straight at you as if to say, “hey lady, are you gonna help me out here? tell him to move over!” I just love watching animal’s social behavior, it really makes me smile. When our chickens are mad at each other…all 5 chickens will only lay in one of the nesting boxes! There are 3 nesting boxes, and they are all the same size and they all have nice clean straw….but no….they will cluck and cluck and strut back and forth while one of them is in there laying and one wants to get in. Just the other day I saw one chicken sitting on top of another chicken in one nesting box! there’s only room for one chicken in there! talk about pressure! geez! They just make me laugh!

    • Suzanne says:

      Hi Bonnie,
      Isn’t all that shuffling back and forth of the calves crazy? And it happens every single time. How about how they clean out their nose with their tongue? Icky. Would love to have chickens, but never have. Would like to raise them for meat, but wouldn’t want to do the butchering. My MIL has done that, and she would help I know. That’s so funny about your hens sitting on top of each other.

  10. P.S. I love your “about me” photo! You look so pretty!

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