Crying Wolf

Well, either I didn't pay close enough to the weather, or the weatherman missed his mark. Either way, I'm thankful. We are missing a major storm, by only a few miles it seems. I was worried that we would get some terrible weather, so I blanketed those that needed to be blanketed and prepared myself for a morning full of soaked and grumpy horses. What we woke to was just a little bit of snow falling and not much else. The horses were dry so it hadn't been snowing for very long (or very hard). This morning was actually rather nice. There was absolutely no wind, which I take as a blessing every time. Now last night doing chores in the dark and wind was not such a blessing. I had hay all over and it seemed every time I moved, I had more hay poking me in unpleasant places.

The weather is supposed to progressively get worse but for now, I'll be thankful that we aren't in a Blizzard Warning or even a Winter Weather Advisory. I am ready for spring and I think the horses are too! Unfortunately, we have a minimum of two and a half more months of throwing hay. And now that the temps are warming, we'll be dealing with....mud!

Speaking of warmer weather. While we had gorgeous weather earlier this week and past weekend, the snow really started to melt. Unfortunately, the way the Sanctuary is set up, much of the runoff from the snow is now going directly into the barn (or dog pen). I can't open the big door on the west side of the barn because it's frozen shut. There's also a frozen pool in one of the stalls now that the water is starting to run in. Pretty soon we'll be dealing with humidity and everything being soaked. Luckily I have all the important stuff up on pallets in the barn. Thank goodness Mike found me some more barrels to put grain in. Now I can seal it up after every use so that I don't have to worry about the moisture ruining a large quantity of grain.  Oh what I would give for a brand new barn that's set up so I can easily run horses in to stalls and not have to go through each stall to get to a specific horse. To have a barn big enough that there's be aisles. Our barn is not the norm. We had to retrofit the stalls to make it work. But I guess that's what happens when you move into an old farmstead.

I'm hoping with the cool down, that the melting will slow but not stop. Slower melting might mean less flooding in the barn. And hopefully there will be less mud to contend with. I'm not looking forward to the ankle deep mud that is fast approaching. But at this point, I'd rather contend with mud rather than subzero temperatures!

This weekend we are supposed to pick up a few bales of hay a fellow supporter donated. We are always so grateful for the additional hay. I was (and still am) worried that we are going to be short. Our hay supplier fell short on the amount of hay that he could get us. So the additional hay we are going to pick up is a definite blessing.