This past Friday morning we woke to a world covered in a thin layer of ice, just as the guessers had predicted. It made the roads treacherous, prompting school cancellations and late business starts throughout the area; even so, there were a lot of people that had to drive on it anyway, for whatever reason, and by all accounts it was a wicked slick morning on the roads and highways. My driveway entrance looked like a little parking lot when I got back down from morning feeding, with a half-dozen cars waiting for the salt trucks to come by so they could make it up Wilson Hill.
I was thankful that the only driving I have to do for my job is in a 6×4 Gator up a dirt road to pitch hay to the cows and let the ducks out. Even my little rough road was cloaked in a sheet of ice, so we slipped and slid a little, and I kept my speeds down with a foot on the brake, especially coming downhill. I remembered to take my camera with me and tried to capture a little of the magic of the frozen moment.
The forest was beautiful, a palette of steel grays, dusky blues, muted mauves and ochres. All the branches brushed with silver glistened and sparkled against the dark trunks.
The cedars and pines were tipped in white and drooping gracefully.
Cows, heifers and steers had icicles dangling from their ears and ate their breakfast on ice-covered ground.
And the sunrise up on the pastures was breathtaking.
Temps hovered right around freezing all day, so the ice lingered anywhere it wasn’t salted or walked on or shoveled. I cleaned off my two porches and the walking bridge across the creek using a hoe to chop and shatter the thin sheet of ice into chunks that could be scraped and swept aside. First time I’ve had to do something like that in a long, long time.
Tonight we have a high wind advisory and thunderstorm watch, wild weather riding in on the approaching cold front. I’ve spent the day lashing down hay, equipment and firewood tarps, putting away loose objects, and generally buttoning the place up for heavy rain and 40-mile-an-hour gusts.
It’s currently 70 degrees outside, and the shop’s concrete slab floor is sweating. Too warm for January. We’ll welcome the return of the cold air.
Thistledog's Farm 