A Wintry Winter's Morning, Part 1

We'd had predictions for up to 18" of snow, but when I got out of bed at 3:00, we had only a wet, slushy coating over everything. It continued coming down, however, and by the time I did the chores, everything was messy but beautiful. I decided to use my camera to record it all. I began with a red apple tree on the south side of the house. These apples were small but numerous - and they clung to the branches long after most apples had fallen, making lovely perches for the snow:

I looked back toward the house:

And then I proceeded to the barn, looking back once more to see the house, the car and the great old cedar leaning over the house:

I'd carried out a short length of hose, kept indoors so it wouldn't fill with ice, and filled the cattle's stock tank:

Then I tended to the chickens but left them indoors for the day. I gave the cattle their grain and fluffed up the hay remaining in their outside bale feeder:

Then I brought the tractor around, scraped the ramp so the sliding door wouldn't stick and forked the evening's manure into its bucket

I went up into the hay loft and dropped down a big pile of old bedding hay. Then I spread it around the floor, also taking this photo through the barn windows:

I drove the full bucket of manure and old hay out to the manure pile and dumped it:


And passed by cow #32, by now my buddy:

The other cows went farther out into the field. I was impressed by cow #35, who, though she had plenty of hay both inside and outside the barn, was scraping the snow aside to get at the grass below - a survivor's instinct:

And since everything was so darn beautiful, I took the tractor around the edge of the field, carefully avoiding the wet spots, to see the sights. The birches along the fence line were especially lovely:

That's a dirt road just the other side of the birches and someone else's field just beyond that. But this was only half of my morning. I'll post Part 2 tomorrow: