Day: February 16, 2014

Of all the animals I have lived with and known, the donkeys are by far the wisest. Even the border collie, reputed to be so intelligent, will do astonishingly stupid and reckless things in the service of his or her work – like try and herd snow plows, tunnel through snow. The donkey, on the other hand, knows how to care care of himself. You rarely see snow or ice built up on a donkey’s back, they do not wander into the snow like sheep looking for forage, they stick to their shelter and wait for humans to come and bring them food and water. If they get bored, they gnaw on the barn or chew on tires. As Red and Maria and I stagger around the farm in the cold and snow, shoveling and scraping the donkeys are our Greek Chorus, looking in bemused and slightly concerned, as if to say “who are the donkeys now?”

You can see that about one/eight of the snow on the roof has fallen off, I don’t want to be around when the rest of it comes off. Border collies have no problems with snow drifts, they just skitter over them although Red did pause a bit. We got enough of it shoveled so we can walk over it, we’ll get the rest later. My farm wife was outraged at the idea that I call for some help shoveling this, she said it was an insult (she is more macho than me, believe me, I am a wussy man), so we will go at it together. We’ll do it, I’m just going to pretend I’m a border collie heading for sheep.

The animals needed feeding, we didn’t have time to dig a path through this huge mound of snow that fell, only a fraction of what’s on the roof – so we climbed over it. In the country, this kind of snowfall kills a lot of barns and collapses a lot of old farm roofs. We will be awhile hacking through it, and hopefully no more will fall today. So far, the snow on the barn has held up, it has a steep slant, which is good.

we heard a series of roars last night and we suspect the truth – a couple of tons of snow had fallen off of the roof (there is a lot more to come) and blocked the doors and windows leading out to the pasture. We can’t quite get outside.  We will be many hours shoveling it out to get it cleared. I’m not one to quote the scriptures too much, but someone on Facebook captured the feeling of the day for me, it is about acceptance: “This is the day the Lord Hath made, and I will be glad and rejoice in it..” No other way to look at it. This is the life I chose, and I will be glad and rejoice in it. Grateful none of us were under this when it came down.