All week they've been telling us about a big storm this weekend, this has been the same story pretty much since the first of December. Now they have been right, and it has snowed pretty much every weekend but at most about 6 inches nothing to major ( except the two feet we got there right before christmas). I thought this was gonna be another one of those predictions because when it was suppose to be snowing yesterday it was raining and high 30's. Yet last night about 9 pm it turned to ice then snow :( So all that rain we got froze and now we have about 10 inches of snow piled up on top of the ice. Now if you are sitting at home in your nice warm house bored to death because your snowed in, so you decided to fix some chili or a meatloff appreciate it; because to get that beef in your meal a farmer ( beef farmer to be exact) isn't bored to death. We were up all night worried about calves or at least I was, because if you didn't know it this is the WORST type of weather for cattle. Now you would think that the -10 degrees last weekend would have been worse but nope your wrong. See the difference between then and now is that last weekend they were dry but it rained all day yesterday before the snow so not only are the cattle cold they are also very wet, which makes the situation 10 times worse.
Now my grandmother informed me last week that she would be out of town this weekend for a conference in DC ( which by the way is shut down with 30 inches of snow). What is complicated about this situation is that we are expecting a snow storm and my grandmother leaves town but the tricky part is that we have a group of cattle synced to calve on the 12th. So here I am two different farms to feed at, a snow storm on the horizon, and cows calving. I immediately made up my mind to spend the weekend at my grandparents farm, Andy being the caring individual that he is told me he could handle the replacement heifers at our place ( I was greatly relieved because trying to travel on these mountain roads in bad weather isn't easy).
When the sun rose this morning it was a complete white out. I made a cup of coffee layered on the clothes and headed to the barn. Now we are lucky compared to some farms because we have a calving barn monitored by video cameras so we can watch the girls in the house and they calve in the clean warm barn instead of outside. Downside is you muck stalls every morning. But no calves last night and I fed and checked everyone out. Calves had shelter and seemed to be doing good and so were the cows. I have one first calf heifer due here on the 12th and she was pretty wet and shivering so I put her in the barn. I also had a donor in standing heat so I'll be breeding her this evening ( I'm think breeding her to SAV Brillance). But besides that, nothing to exciting. But it's only 1:30 and I'm headed back out to switch out groups to the hay barn so there is still plenty of possiblities left in the day! But if your home by the fire with your loved ones I hope you appreciate the service and dedication others do in this weather so that you have food on your table. Thank a farmer
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