Joys of Winter

Feed supplies were getting low; not critically, but low.  It could have waited another day, but it wasn't raining at the moment and discretion seemed the better part of valor so I jumped in the truck to do the deed.  Less than a mile from the house, I had to turn on the windshield wipers.  Of course I did.  Patrick was kind enough to wrap a plastic sheet around the bags of goat chow for the ride home.  Unloading three hundred pounds of feed in drizzling rain was, shall I say, not my idea of fun, but it was good that I'd gone when I did.

Perhaps if I lived in New England, I might feel different, but in California there is something magical when you realize that some of those raindrops are fat and slow.  My jacket was still drying in front of the stove when the snow began, not fifteen minutes after I got back to the house.  I haven't seen the turkeys for a couple of weeks.  Looking out, I saw a group of eighteen hunched in their black feathers, tails drooping, looking for all the world like a convention of undertakers.  (Apologies to undertakers everywhere.)  A little later, they'd put white coats over their backs, it was snowing that hard, over an inch in less than an hour.  This photo was taken while it was still dropping big, fat, fluffy flakes.  I've got some great shots in my camera taken when the snow was five-plus inches in the front yard, but camera and computer are still on the outs.  It's been so long since we've had snow that I forgot the routine and went out to put the kids to bed without changing to boots.  Drifts were well over my shoe tops in the pasture on the way to the barn where the goats had clumped together.  Poppy, in her wool coat, was in the field.  I brushed snow off her back as she went into her stall so it wouldn't melt in the night.  Back in the house, pulling off wet, cold socks and shaking snow out of the cuffs of my bibbies, I watched programs I'd DVRd as the satellite dish reception was blocked.  I watched until the power went out.  What a surprise.  The real surprise was that it was back on this morning.  Early this morning.  I got up at four simply because I didn't know what time it was.  Bessie Anne, Frank, and Pearl think I've lost my mind and are still asleep.  Bless those guys at PG&E; they earned their overtime.