ice, ice baby

We absolutely love everything about living on a farm for about 355 days a year. Today was one of those rare 10 when it really sucks.

We were hit with a big ice storm last night. Which meant that everything had about 1/2 inch of ice on it when we woke up, which meant sliding down to the barn to feed critters this morning. The Map Man was 4 hours late for work, not because of traffic problems, but because he was busy making impromptu sand paths all over the property so that we could get around.

Here's one of his sand paths in the foreground of this picture. You can see how the rest of the paddock is just glare ice. Unfortunately it only takes one storm to pretty much wipe out our sand supply, and they are predicting another for Thursday (hopefully they're wrong and it will either be snow or plain old rain!). We're brainstorming about where to come up with enough sand before then. We usually get one of these sorts of storms each winter, but usually there's already a solid base of snow underneath, which makes it a little more bearable, as we can break through the crusty layer and have pretty decent footing.

A picture of some "haysicles". The other, probably even MORE unfortunate result from a storm like this is that I am out of luck in regards to income-producing ability. That's what happens when your entire income depends on the weather and animals being able to get around in it. Bad, bad time of year to be out of work. Hopefully we'll get a large warming period or a good heavy snowfall sooner rather than later and I'll be able to get back to work again. In the meantime, though, I'm nervously looking around to find things to sell on ebay.

The animals are more or less stuck indoors until the footing improves. Here Lacy grabs herself a mouthful of hay. We've hung her hay rack on the outside of the shelter so that Butterscotch can't reach it. (He's on a special diet for his Insulin Resistance, and our hay has too much sugar in it for him.) The sheep are fairly comfortable in their new digs, so we're glad we got that squared away before this storm hit. The early New England colonial farmers definitely had the right idea when they built their barns attached to their houses!

We spread straw for footing and bedding in the dog yards, so they can be out as much as possible despite the lousy footing. Tristan makes himself comfortable on a straw bed this afternoon.

I finished the morning chores around 1:30pm. (Although I sort of rolled the mid-day chores into it as well.) Which gives me a whole four hours before I have to start the evening chores. It may have gone faster if I didn't have to keep coming inside to check on the kids, feed them meals, pop another DVD in the player for them. (We'll pay for all that TV viewing tonight when they're bouncing off the walls at bedtime.) Even if I'd wanted to risk the local roads (I hear the state roads are in pretty good shape), we still would have missed J's homeschool classes. Daily rhythm? Completely out the window. Although I did manage to fit in our rest time when I finally finished up. And believe me, I NEEDED that rest!

Yup, it's not great to be me right this minute. I'm officially jealous of those of you in southerly climes and "normal" houses without a zillion critters to care for. Tomorrow I'll probably go back to being happy to be me.