The busy road in front of the farmhouse was quiet this morning, but I saw the flashing yellow light of a New York State Highway Plow Truck and ran out with my camera, the plow trucks are a bit like the cavalry to me, they come rushing to the rescue, in a big storm like this one, they remind me of icebreakers, plowing a great path through the snow and ice, kicking up a great cloud. They seem beautiful and powerful to me.
Sheep and donkeys are desert and mountain animals, they know how to live the real lives of real animals, but when snowstorms like this morning’s strike, I feel the natural human tug of wishing their lives were sometimes easier. When storms like this hit, we can’t move the feeders, they are frozen solid to the ground, and it isn’t good for the animals to put the hay on the ground indoors, it gets mixed with dirt and manure and stepped on.
They don’t mind snow, they walk around in it all of the time, it is usually the wind and ice that bother them, so they have plenty of shelter from that. This morning, the donkeys and sheep came out together and fed together, then retreated into the Pole Barn, where they will ride out the storm. I appreciate the real lives of real animals, it is so easy to see them as furbabies, as dependent and piteous children. I do not see them that way any more than I see my border collie in that way, they cannot be protected from life, they share it with us, they are not our dependents, they are our partners, they share the joys and travails of life.
