The town I live in is south of Lake Ontario and East of Lake Erie. These 2 Great Lakes often give us what is called lake effect snow. In short, the lakes are warm, cold air passes over them picking up moisture and then impolitely dumps it on those of us downwind from the lake.
Thankfully the little town I live in is just out of reach of the snows created off each lake. I like to refer to our weather as the donut effect. When you watch the weather maps in motion you can see a little donut hole around our town. We typically miss everything. So, when Mr Weatherman was talking about 4-6” of snow last night with blowing wind (blah blah blah) I totally ignored it. Why? Let me put it this way. I’ve plowed 1x all winter yet the City of Rochester just north of me has had over 80+ inches of snow so far this season.
Needless to say when I woke up this morning thinking I had plenty of time for my usual chores list I was in shock to see snow. Thanks to the wind it wasn’t just 4-6 inches but more like 1-2 feet! Errrrr! It’s now 5am and I have to leave in 2 hours to get to work on time. Great.
To complicate my chores even more I didn’t put the new round bale out last night thinking I’d have plenty of time this morning so that was 1st on the to do list; especially since I wanted to test out the new Slow Bale Buddy. I bundled up, put on my muck boots and bulldozed my way to the workshop. Of course the blowing snow was a good foot or more up the barn door so I wiggled and pushed and shoveled until I could finally slide the door open.
Once in, I plugged in the tractor so it could warm up and put the new Slow Bale Buddy in the bucket so I could bring it with me. I then proceeded to bring in the horses and feed everyone as well as brush off the plow truck and warm it up.
20 minutes later I came back to the tractor and was ready to go get my bale. Totally forgetting I had the Slow Bale Buddy in the bucket I thought to myself… “self, wouldn’t it be a good idea to use the tractor to clear the snow away from the workshop as I leave?” Oh yeah, great idea Einstein and I proceeded to clear snow with the tractor.
It wasn’t until I got to the hay barn that I realized that I just buried my new Slow Bale Buddy under a mountain of snow! NOOOO! I went back to look for it but, a new white hay net, in a pile of snow is not easy to find. So I gave up, I guess I’ll just have to use my Bale Buddy again instead.
Hmm. Where is my big green bale buddy? Oh yeah, buried in the snow somewhere in the pasture. *grumble* Out I went with the tractor and dug up the bag and dragged it back to the barn for the new bale.
It turns out maneuvering deep snow in a tractor isn’t as much fun as it seems. Even with 4×4 the tractor would just slide sidewise or not turn at all. It was also unnerving when I’d be pushing through the snow in the pasture and then hit a frozen poop pile and get bumped all over especially since I can’t put the roll-bar up. Mental note, new hay barn needs a minimum of 12’ ceiling, 14’ would be even better.
I finally did manage to complete all my usual morning chores, shovel the walkways, plow the unforgiving long driveway, plow my mom’s driveway, before quickly changing and heading off to work.
As for my test of the Slow Bale Buddy, well, that’ll just have to wait until I find the darn thing in the snow mountain.
