A Snowy, Peaceful Morning On The Farm

We'd had two days of very heavy snow and I thought it had ended. Yet the next morning I went out to do the chores and discovered it was still snowing heavily and a very heavy buildup of new snow had filled in my previously plowed driveway, the cattle yard and the gates. Nonetheless, it was a pretty snow, with big, fluffy flakes. I began my chores in the chicken coop, where they were comfy and relatively warm:

Then I fed the cattle, after which I followed them out to their hay bale feeder. Jasmine looked at me with curiosity but no alarm. She's a calm, friendly girl:

Gracie, the bossy cow, had a more serious look on her face - yet I knew she accepted my presence:

Gracie had previously hollowed out a deep tunnel in the hay and was sticking her head in to eat the fresh hay at the bottom. Big, pretty snowflakes kept falling all around us:

I walked back toward the barn and took a photo of this peaceful, quiet scene as I went. There was no sound except for a few bluejays in a nearby tree:

One of the cows ambled over for a drink of heated water:

"Hey, are you lookin' at me?":

I had a snowbank of 9 feet or more by the side of my driveway:

You can see how it obscured the view of the telephone pole and apple trees:

But my favorite part of the morning was watching Gracie tuck into her breakfast hay, sticking her whole head down a narrow tunnel she'd eaten into the hay bale. It was a calming, earthy experience as the snow continued to cover us all and the bluejays called from the nearest tree: