snowed in

We can get out now… for now

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Knowing we had a pharmacy delivery coming – and more snow – as soon as I finished giving the outside cats their food and water, I headed to the garage to break out little Spewie.

I then spent the next 2 hours clearing enough space in front of the garage to be able to back the truck out and turn. Then I had to go in to warm up and have breakfast. My down filled coat was completely wet, so I ended up borrowing my daughter’s leather coat. It has no lining, but it cuts the wind completely, so the layers I had underneath were more than enough to keep me warm.

The first picture in the slide show above is what I got done in the morning. For a lot of it, I had to first break up the crust of snow at the top with a shovel before I could get through with little Spewie. With the wind, I was working only in one direction, so the wind could blow the snow away from me. I still got covered in snow, but at least it wasn’t as bad.

When I came about out to work on the driveway to the gate, I broke out a second 100′ extension cord. That was just enough to reach the gate. Thankfully, beyond the gate was blown clear. There was just the plow ridge at the end that needed dealing with.

Which I never got to. As I write this, my younger daughter is actually out there, working on it.

It took another 2-2 1/2 hours to get the driveway cleared to the gate. Dragging that much cord around sure didn’t make things easier! By the time I was done, the snow was starting to come down pretty hard. The wind was worse than the snow, though. I’d gone back to the gate with the shovel to work on the plow ridge but once at the gate, there are no longer any trees to block the wind, and it was just too brutal to keep going.

I discovered something while working on this. I have a step counter app on my phone. When I got in after the first 2 hours of walking back and worth, the app had me at a ridiculously low step count. I had my phone in my chest pocket, so there was no chance of snow getting in and getting it wet. It was so snug in there, it wasn’t counting most of my steps. When I headed out later, I had them in a pants pocket, but I had so many layers, it was still missing most of my steps. We’re talking off by thousands, not just a few steps here and there!

Once inside, I found someone had hung up on our answering machine. Caller ID told me it was the pharmacy, so I gave them a call. It was about the timing of our delivery. Even with the weather getting worse, the driver was already out! So I basically just stayed in my boots and my layers until I got the call from the driver that he was just a few minutes a day (something we have requested the driver does, since we keep the gate closed). I made sure to tell him I hadn’t been able to clear the plow ridge, so he might not be able to pull into our driveway. Then I bundled back up again to meet him at the gate. The plow ridge wasn’t too bad, but a bit much for a sedan, so he just pulled over on the road. As I asked him about road conditions, I noticed something extra on my husband’s bag of prescriptions.

Something that needed to be signed. With his meds including controlled substances, he has a form he (or I, on his behalf) needs to sign for them, once a year.

Neither of us had a pen.

So I brought it in and my husband signed it, then called the pharmacy about it. We hoped he could just take a picture and email that in, but they need the physical paper. He’s getting his bubble packs delivered next week, so we can give it then, or I can bring it over the next time I’m in town.

Which might be tomorrow.

My sister had called the hospital this morning and sent an update. My mother was finally no longer in ER, but in a room, where she has a TV and a phone. She was much happier! She’s going to be on IV for another day, and then… ???

Once I had the chance in the afternoon, I called the hospital again. The nurse I talked to had just checked on my mother, and she was napping.

I had a chance to talk to her about our concerns that she might be discharged to home, and that we felt she could not live independently anymore. We were hoping that, with her in the hospital, perhaps the doctor could make the decision, since home care wasn’t.

Now, when I say “home care” for this stuff, it’s not the local office that takes care of her visits, but a higher up office. Anything we do with the local office when it comes to paneling my mother for long term care gets sent to this higher department. That department is where everything has been stalled. My mother got paneled a second time, less than 2 months ago, and the local home care coordinator had heard nothing since she gave them the updated paperwork.

That department has a liaison in the hospital.

If the doctor thinks my mother needs to go into long term care, but the liaison disagrees, guess who has the final say?

Not the doctor.

The nurse completely understood when I expressed my frustration.

I did have a chance to tell her that my mother can be her own worst enemy. She will complain loudly about minor things, like her “dry mouth”, but it took us (including the home care workers) about a week or more to get her to finally use the Lifeline and get to a hospital.

Guess what my mother has been complaining about to the nurses?

Yup. Her dry mouth.

She can’t accept that she’s simply sleeping with her mouth open. She won’t use the spray. She won’t keep herself hydrated.

The problem with her complaining about the dry mouth is, she’s not talking about why she’s sleeping with her mouth open in the first place. She’s having trouble breathing when she lies down. This isn’t even a sleep apnea thing, because she struggled to breathe when the paramedics had her lying on her back for a few seconds before raising her up to a more seated position.

The nurse assured me that the doctor was aware of the situation. I knew I was forgetting something, and now that I’ve written this, I remember. I never mentioned her macular degeneration is getting worse, and we can’t even transport her to the specialty eye clinic in the city for treatment. She’s losing her vision. More reason for her to not be going home, but to go into long term care from the hospital.

Even the nurse was commenting that, when someone is approaching 100 years of age, like my mother is, they really should be able to just go into long term care if they want!

So I got that update from the nurse and passed info along to my family. My brother and I had already made plans to visit my mother tomorrow but, now that she’s in the hospital, we’re looking at going to her place to pick up some more clothes and whatnot for her, then going to visit her in the hospital.

Assuming the roads are open and cleared.

Then I got a surprise.

A phone call from my mother!

We had a chance to talk for quite a while. She actually sounded better than she has in quite a while. I told her that – then told her to try sounding sick! 😄

My mother being my mother, she had all her usual complaints. She used to work in a hospital 70-75 years ago, so she knows how they are supposed to be run, and always brings up the same thing. There’s always noise, day and night (I told her, she was in the ER. There’s no difference between day and night in the ER! But it should be better, now that she’s in a room). She can here the staff – and instead of using the word “laughing”, she starts to “laugh” in a very mocking and nasty way. She makes this complaint so often, it seems that hearing other people laugh is the thing about being in the hospital she hates the most. She doesn’t like the sound of other people being happy. As for being in a room now, she complained that she could hear another patient, calling for help.

She didn’t care that a patient needed help. She only cared that it was noise she didn’t want to hear.

Then she complained that she can’t tell the difference between a nurse and a janitor, because they all dress the same (she thinks they should be in those old style starched white uniforms, still).

Of course, she was also complaining about how they are giving her her medications. They look different (different pharmacy, different supplier), so she doesn’t think they are the right medications. There was one that she takes at bed time that they didn’t give her until the morning, so that’s another thing that made her believe they are giving her the wrong medications, different medications, they don’t know what they are doing…

If there’s any sign that my mother is feeling better, it’s that she’s hating on everyone around her again.

When I mentioned to her that we were planning to go to her place to get her some clothes, she wanted me to bring her medications. She doesn’t trust them. I told her, I could bring them, but they would have to lock them away (they had to do that with her T3’s that she brought with her) and would not be allowed to use them. They have to use their own supply, not hers. What was obvious was that, if she had access to her own bubble packs, she would be taking her own medications on top of what they were giving her.

She really is her own worse enemy at times!

She also told me the doctor said that she would be there for another week, and that a nurse told her that she had water around her heart. I knew she didn’t have any in her lungs, but the only thing mentioned to us is that they were trying to get the swelling down on her legs. No one has said anything about her heart, and no one has said anything about how long she will be there. When she was in the hospital before, she had told me the doctor said she would be there for another three weeks, but when we brought it up with the doctor, he had no clue what we were talking about.

So that whole situation is just a mess. It will be good when we can go to the hospital in person and talk to the doctor directly!

Whether or not we can get out tomorrow, we shall see. The snow is supposed to continue, off and on, for another 5 hours or so. It’s not a lot of snow, but the blowing snow advisory is on until 7 or 8am. Checking my weather and highway conditions groups, highways are being closed again all over the place.

I expect our roads to be plowed. It’s our own driveway that will be the issue. All the clearing I did will help, but my daughter told me that drift I’d cleared from under our gate was already back, and there was no sign that I’d cleared it earlier.

Also, she is so happy with her Tough Duck overalls. They cut wind like nobody’s business! They aren’t lined, but she didn’t feel the cold at all.

I need to get me a pair, too!

So that’s where we are at. It’s all one day at a time right now.

The Re-Farmer

Digging out, and an update

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, the worst of our first blizzard of the winter hit us last night. The snow has stopped, but we are still under Orange Alert (severe, rather than red for extreme – that’s to the south of us, and into the US) blizzard warning. Today is supposed to be high winds, with snow starting again tomorrow. We’ve already passed our high of -21C/9F (wind chill, -43C/-45F) and are expected to slowly drop in temperature to -31C/24F in the wee hours of tomorrow morning.

The wind direction was the worst for our set up. It drifted snow all across the front of the house, and snow blew into the food and water bowl shelters. I had the snow shovel close to the sun room, so I only had to push through a small snow drift to be able to reach it.

There were LOTS of cats in the sun room. The nice, warm sun room.

I’ll start with some before and after slideshows.

You can see the handle of the snow shovel in the door’s window. Easy to reach, thankfully.

There was no sign of the path through here before. There was a bit of drifting into the entry of the covered greenhouse, but the thermometer in there was reading 0C/32F!

First priority was to dig out in front of the sun room and get to the isolation shelter, clearing the greenhouse entry along the way. I’ll have to go back later and clear the well cap. It’s completely buried and at least partially now covered by the snow I dug out to clear the path. I wanted to make sure to move the snow away from the house, so there are fewer issues with snowmelt at that corner by the basement window in the spring.

The bottom of the shelf shelter was almost completely blocked by drifted snow. That cover is sure doing its job, though!

I had to dig around the isolation shelter – that entry was almost completely blocked – to reach the windows on each side, and top up their food and water. There were six cats in there, all warm and cozy, watching me dig.

Clearing the kibble and water bowl shelters took a bit more doing. Once I cleared the snow in the middle, I dug out the kibble trays and dumped them out, then tried to clear out as much snow as possible, without taking all the straw out. The heated water bowl was completely full. No cats were going there to drink! I got as much snow as I could out of there, taking the bed and cat cave out and clearing them of snow, too. There was even snow piling up in front of the cat house entry, which I cleared. There were no tracks in the snow, so no cats had used it all night, but after I cleared it, I spotted the white with grey tabby spots inside, looking at me through the window. When I saw her earlier, she had come out from under the storage house, so I was glad to see her in a cozy bed in the cat house.

I neglected to take a “before” picture to the catio. Almost all the area to the left of the first photo had been cleared to make room for the truck. Now, you can’t even tell. It was all blown over, flat with snow.

I only dug one path to the catio door. I didn’t bother clearing the shrine feeding station yet. The food dish had been shoved off to the side, so clearly some critter had been digging around in there, looking for kibble. A small amount of snow did blow in through the opening, but just a dusting.

The rest will have to wait. It’s getting colder and it’s just too windy. I didn’t even try to clear the steps in front of the main doorway, nor the sidewalk. Once this all blows over, we might be able to get little Spewie out, but it’s not going to be easy for that little thing to get through the drifts, so we’ll be doing a lot of shoveling.

The important thing is, the yard cats have food and water and shelter.

Gotta have priorities!

Speaking of priorities, I have an update on my mother. My brother called the hospital this morning, but the new shift were in their morning meeting still, so he was asked to call back later. The nurse he spoke to was able to tell him that my mother did well overnight, though she struggled to go to the washroom, so they brought her a commode. The alarming thing, though, was that they were talking about sending my mother home!

Aside from the fact that my mother should not be going home at all right now, my brother pointed out it wasn’t even possible. All the highways are closed. The nurse was quite aware of that. When her shift ended last night, she couldn’t leave. Not even to go to a hotel. She spent the night in the hospital and just started her shift in the morning.

!!!

When my brother called back, he was told they were still monitoring her. They were putting her on an IV with a diuretic to try and get the swelling in her legs down. No doctor had arrived yet. Which isn’t much of a surprise, considering the road conditions. At the very least, we know they won’t try to discharge her from the ER until a doctor sees her today. However, they also can’t admit her to the hospital until a doctor sees her, either. So she’s stuck in the ER.

I’m just flabbergasted that there was even a possibility of her being sent home, even if the roads were open. I strongly suspect my mother is in her “I don’t want to bother anyone” mode and downplaying her issues again. Which she only does when there really are issues! When it comes to minor complaints, she has no problem “bothering people” at all, and expects us all to drop everything and cater to her. But when she’s have real struggles, suddenly it’s the opposite.

My mother’s biggest problem is that she’s too flipping strong and resilient! So she can “pass” as being better than she actually is.

I’ll be calling the hospital myself to check on her soon. I forgot to mention my mother’s kidney function concerns. I have no idea how much of her file they can access.

So it’s still a waiting game. None of us can do anything right now, regardless. I checked the provincial highway status map earlier. The closed highways are marked in red. The bypass highway around the city is shut down – all of it – so it’s completely encircled in red. Pretty much every highway leading to the city is also shut down, including four major highways heading north, in our direction. Right now, the map looks like a giant red spider with its body over the city, and red legs sprawling out over half the province in all directions.

I also checked the local highways group I follow on FB, as they tend to be much faster with information than the provincial website. It was filled with posts from people talking about zero visibility. The most recent one was someone who had tried to use the highway that goes past our place. They made it as far as the large town our doctor is in before turning around and going home. It was simply too dangerous. Everyone was saying, stay home if you can.

Not that we can do anything else, until we can clear the driveway. Which may not happen until Saturday, since we’re expecting more snow tomorrow (Friday).

A good day to drink lots of hot tea, and listen to Christmas music. Like this remarkable cover of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.

What an amazing instrument!

The Re-Farmer

Waited too long

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, that was a mistake.

After doing some shoveling this morning, I headed in and took a break with breakfast and a pot of tea before heading out again in the afternoon.

I waited too long.

I started by doing the upstairs litters, then getting the burn going, getting rid of our burnable garbage along with the sawdust litter. While tending that, I cleared the paths to the electric meter. With how warm it was getting and how the snow was changing, even in that time, I put a cover on the burn ring sooner than I normally would have, then went to get little Spewie out and clear the driveway.

It was too late.

It’s -4C/25F right now, bright and sunny. All the paths I dug earlier, where it’s darker, have melted away, but the snow is just getting wetter, stickier and heavier. Too sticky for the snow blower. I had to give up after only a couple of passes across the front of the garage.

While it’s not much of a problem for shoveling paths, with the snow just getting wetter and heavier, there’s no way we can shovel the entire driveway.

Which means we’re stuck. Our vehicles can’t get through that, either.

On top of that, the roads aren’t plowed, and I suspect they won’t be.

Hopefully, the warmer temperatures will take care of it for us by the weekend, when we are supposed to reach above freezing temperatures for highs from then on. I know the highways will be clear by then, but it’s rather different on gravel roads.

Crud.

The Re-Farmer

Digging out

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We got them done! All the paths have been cleared.

I just had to stop, half way to the compost pile, take a glove off and get a photo. It’s hard to tell with my puffy parka, but the snow is now just below waist high on me. The path had been filled in completely at this spot, and was level with the rest of the yard.

The piles of snow from shoveling, on either side, are almost shoulder high on me in places.

The path to the feeding station was also dug out, clearing the steps to the dining room door along the way. We don’t use that door, but it’s one of our emergency exits, so the steps need to be kept clear.

While I was working on the path to the compost pile, the two deer that regularly visit came by! One came all the way to the feeding station, but my being in the path and shoveling ended up being too much for them, and they both ran off. I’m just tickled that they were willing to come as close to me as they did!

We got a burn done as well, so the burn barrel needed to be cleared, with space to move around it. Even with the wide area where we put the bag down, it’s a bit tight to stand next to a fire! I wanted to make sure there was enough fuel for the barrel to keep smoldering, so that it would slowly dry, then burn, the sawdust from the cat litter, so a path was dug until we hit branches from the pile that needs to be chipped. Just far enough to be able to dig some out, or break pieces free. Hopefully, this time it will continue to smolder and burn away the sawdust litter. Last time we did a burn, the sawdust froze before the heat of the fire could dry it and catch.

The path to the electricity meter had to be dug out too, of course, then I checked the path to the pump shack door. I just had to laugh! Our angel with the front end loader wasn’t able to push the snow further back, so it was dumped in front, completely obliterating the path to the door.

It took a lot of breaking things up with the ice chipper to be able to reopen a path!

Ah, the things we do for the yard cats. ;-)

And now I sit with a huge mug of tea, and some freshly baked shortbread cookies, to warm up!

The Re-Farmer

Not going anywhere, today! Plus, cat surgery update

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

After doing my morning rounds, I contacted the garage to let him know I wasn’t going to make my appointment with the van today. We are under blizzard conditions right now, which are expected to continue until this evening.

There actually isn’t a lot of snow, but the winds are insane. There is a drift in front of the garage door we will have to dig out before we can go anywhere though, at the moment, the driveway is still mostly clear.

There is supposed to be a path around the back of the kibble house, and a kibble tray at the end. Under the drift. The cat path to under the storage house was also filling in.

Temperature wise, we are at only -17C/1F, but with 50km/31m per hour winds, the wind chill is at -31C/-24F. The winds are coming from the northwest, which we are normally protected from, but at these speeds, it’s just swirling around the house and all the outbuildings.

The path to the compost pile is, once again, mostly gone.

Even right up against the house, the path to the feeding station is mostly filled in.

I opened the gate to check the road, then left it open so that it would not be drifted over in the closed position. Right now, the only thing keeping the end of our driveway from drifting over completely, are the walls of snow made by the front end loader when it was being cleared. They’re acting a bit like a snow fence, for the moment. The road past our place is actually looking quite clear, but it runs from north to south, and the winds are just blowing the snow along. The main gravel road, and the highway I would be taking to get that oil change done, would be drifted over, and the winds would be hitting our van broadsided. I checked the Facebook group for local highway conditions, and some people were reporting that they were in the ditch – and the roads they were on were mostly clear! It was the winds that did them in.

Smart kitties. They came out when I put food and warm water out, ate and drank quickly, then disappeared into their various hidey holes. One is visible in the window, but I think there’s about 5 or 6 in there.

I saw Rolando Moon emerge from the junk pile. She’s a tough one, and has seen many cold winters. She knows how to handle it. She stayed out to eat longer than the other cats, then went into the insulated shelf shelter to get out of the wind. Which, as you can see, is even managing to blow snow into the opening!

We need to build more little shelters like this. Especially when we finally get that junk pile hauled away. They use it for shelter, a lot.

Before heading outside, I treated Butterscotch and Nosencrantz with some wet cat food. Nosencrantz has been staying on the top shelf of the frame the heat bulb is in, which means sitting on top of the board the fixture is attached to. That puts her under the light we’ve got, hanging under the peak. It’s got a full spectrum bulb that we were using for seed starts. It’s incandescent, so it’s also warm, so we’ve been leaving it on. She was there when I came in, and I helped her down so she wouldn’t have to jump and jar her body.

Butterscotch has been using one of the box beds we have set up, and very languidly emerged when I brought the food out. I can see some things knocked about a bit, so I know at least one of them is trying to jump onto shelves and explore a bit, but it’s not too bad.

When I was done my rounds, I paused to spend time with them before going into the house. Nosencrantz quite enjoyed being held and snuggled.

When I put her on the swing bench, she was comfortable enough to roll around and let me see her roly poly belly!

She is such a big sausage!

I was able to pick up Butterscotch and cuddle her a bit, too. She even purred at me!

After hearing from the vet, what the condition of her uterus was when they removed it, I have a suspicion that Butterscotch is going to undergo a catonality change. She’s always had a bit of a mean streak at times. I now wonder if it was due to physical discomfort. Right now, she’s moving around more slowly (or course!), but while I was holding Nosencrantz, she still came over and wound around my feet. When I picked her up, she was a lot calmer than I normally expect her to be. Even as I was going in and out of the sun room, she made no attempt to escape, though that might have more to do with having just had surgery, yesterday. Perhaps, once she’s healed up more from the surgery, she’ll go back to her more ornery self. However, I have a suspicion she’s going to be a happier and more pleasant cat to be around.

It should be interesting to see how it goes for Beep Beep, next week. We don’t know if she is older or younger than Butterscotch.

So today is a day to stay indoors. We shall see if we can make the trip to the city tomorrow or not. The winds are supposed to die down, but the temperature is supposed to drop quite a bit.

Times like this are exactly why we’ve been working so hard to stay stocked up!!

Having said that, one of the things I was hoping to do while in town getting the oil change, was to come home with some Chinese take-out. Now that it’s no longer an option, I am craving Chinese food like crazy! :-D

The Re-Farmer

We made it!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We made our much needed trip into town!

As I write this, we have warmed up to -7C/19F, with a wind chill of -13C/9F. It was just a couple of degrees colder and had stopped snowing when my daughter and I headed out to town.

For all the clearing we did, once I started down the driveway, I didn’t dare stop until I got to the road. My daughter could take care of the gate for me, so that worked out.

The winds were still coming from the south-southwest (as I write this, they are now coming from the northwest), and the roads were drifting over, but we were still able to get through all right.

We were a bit too fast with our shopping, though, and when we stopped to get the mail, the post office wasn’t reopened for the afternoon, yet. So we unloaded the van, put stuff away, then my daughter crawled through their upstairs window to start shoveling the roof while I waited until I could go back to the post office to pick up our packages. If we didn’t get them today, we wouldn’t be able to get them until Monday.

I was heading back out in less than an hour, and by then it had started to snow again.

Very picturesque, but the visibility had dropped dramatically. I’m glad I only had about 3 miles to go!

Once back, I brought out the telescoping roof shovel we’ve got, to get some other parts of the roof. I did as much as I could reach over the sun room which, unfortunately, isn’t very far. I was able to clear under the Starlink dish, however, and I’m glad I could. Once the snow under it was moved, a whole bunch more immediately slid off the dish. I really appreciate that these dishes are self heated!

The cool thing is, even though there was snow built up on the dish, we’ve had almost no noticeable loss of connectivity. There was an hour last night that had a series of short outages, due to network error, while this morning there was one, due to obstruction, but in all that, there was only one that was long enough for even be noticed.

Aside from the sun room roof, I also got as much as I could off of the entryway roof. The west side of it had a drift that was at least 4 feet thick!

I’m glad we got that done, though I’m a bit concerned about tomorrow. We’re supposed to meet with the woman that will be fixing our cats, to pick up donated cat food and drop off Cabbages into care. With the way things are blowing, we might have issues getting out of our driveway. I do expect the plows to be out already, but it’s hard to say when our gravel roads will be done.

It’s a bit late, considering Cabbages is to be taken in tomorrow and getting vet care through this organization, but one of the things we picked up today was cat milk. We need to get more calories and nutrients into her, and I’m hoping she’ll actually like this stuff enough that we won’t need to use the syringe. I’ll be trying that out once I’m done writing this post.

It does look like the snow had stopped again, so that’s a good sign for getting out tomorrow! Though we are supposed to be getting cat food donated to us, I still looked for some while at the grocery store, and the big bags were out of stock, just like the stores in the city. There have been real issues with lack of inventory for quite some time. Particularly in the big bags. We were never quite able to stock up adequately. All the more reason to be thankful for the donated food!

Now if we can just pray that we don’t get snowed in – and neither does the woman we are supposed to meet up with tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Digging out

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Oh, man, I am so tired.

Today, we started digging out from yesterday’s blizzard.

We didn’t finish, but progress was made.

My husband was a sweetheart and did the cats’ food and water this morning. He shouldn’t have, but did have to dig his way to the kibble house and uncover a couple of water bowls. He slogged his way to the kibble tray under the shrine.

Knowing him, he was probably wearing his sandals while he was out there! LOL

There is a set of stairs to the main entry over under that snow. Good thing we are using the sun room doors! The cat path is pretty funny.

I shovelled my way to the stairs before I stopped, then slogged my way around the corner to grab the 100 ft extension cords, then went to the garage.

I am not standing in a drift, here. The snow is up to my knees.

I shoveled in front of the garage enough to open the doors to where little Spewie is stored.

This little thing is not made for a job as big as this! The expeller was barely higher than the snow!

Seeing the photo, I am noticing the knob at the end of the handle to rotate the expeller. I wish I’d noticed it earlier. The bottom of my parka kept getting caught on it, and the knob end fell right off! I did eventually get a chance to look closer, and it just needed to be screwed back on.

At this point, I paused to add the second 100 ft extension cord.

As you can see, there is a lot of water under that snow! As light as little Spewie is, the wet made it very difficult to push it forward, and my footing was precarious.

Here, the snow was above my knees.

You can see in this photo, that the knob end had fallen off by this time.

Guess who finally reached the gate, only to discover they’d forgotten the key? LOL

At least the walk back would be much easier!

Along the way, I also paused to knock the snow and ice off the trail cam, though I didn’t switch out the memory cards, yet. I haven’t even tried to reach the one by the new sign – a sign, and camera, I’m sure is now plastered with a layer of snow and ice, too!

Once I got the key, I discovered another problem.

I couldn’t get it into the lock.

No, it was not because of ice.

There seems to be a piece of metal jammed in there!

Off hand, I’d think it was our vandal, but there were no tracks in the snow. The last time we opened the lock was Wednesday morning, 2 days ago. We did get a prescription delivery early that evening. My daughter met the driver at the gate, since I was up to my elbows in flour, but never had to unlock the gate.

Well, maybe we’ll see something in our trail cam, before it got covered with snow, when I switch the memory cards out tomorrow.

I had to cut the lock off to open the gate, and continue on to the road.

Once that first pass was made as far as the road, the rest went a bit easier. Going back and forth, I could only clear a few inches wider each time, because of how deep it was.

The road has not been plowed yet. Which means we’re going to have a ridge of snow across the end, soon! LOL

I cleared it just wide enough to drive though. Barely.

But I wasn’t able to finish in front of the garage. We can’t back the van out, yet, and where my mother’s car is, we can’t even open the doors, yet.

In one of the photos, you can see the path my daughters shoveled. They also shoveled paths to the burn barrel, the meter on the power pole, and even to the pump shack. There was concern that a cat was in the pump shack and was snowed in. We kept hearing plaintive meowing, but couldn’t really tell where it was coming from. There is a hole in the bottom of the pump shack door that smaller cats go in and out of that they cleared, just in case.

They also shoveled the sidewalk, around the kibble house, and to the kibble tray under the shrine. You can see that snow even got into the kibble house! A garden hoe turned out to be the perfect tool to clear that out. It was remarkably hard packed.

After they did the shoveling, they made supper and, by the time I came in, there was food and a fresh pot of hot tea waiting for me!

I really needed it, by then. While it was almost too warm for how bundled up I was, I was very wet. My boots were soaked and, even though I had a pair of those foot warmer things, my toes were starting to feel frozen. Plus, while clearing beyond the gate, the wind was blowing the snow all over me, so even my parka was wet by the time I was done. Of course, my double layer of pants were wet to my knees, too. We will have to finish tomorrow.

One of the last things the girls did before heading in was go around to some of the lilacs and knock off the snow, so they wouldn’t break under the weight. Some things, however, were already broken.

One large branch along the south fence line near the driveway was visible from the garage security camera, so I was expecting that one. It turned out to be the top of a dead tree. Another large piece of dead tree fell right on the barbed wire, but we haven’t been able to get at it, yet.

Nor have we been able to get at the large branch that fell in front of the outhouse. I’m sure there are other fallen branches around, but we haven’t even tried to make our way through the snow to check, yet.

Tomorrow, we will need to get back at it. At the very least, we need to clear enough to be able to back the van out of the garage and turn towards the road. We also need to clear enough of the yard that we have room to drive up to the house, with room to turn around.

This is one of those days were I really wish our vandal had returned the Bobcat, as my mother repeatedly requested. This could all have been finished, including the yard, in less than an hour with that thing. I was out there for more than three hours. I’m seriously considering contacting our renter and seeing if we can hire them to come over with their tractor! I’m sure we could find somewhere to squeeze that our of our budget.

Our forecast has changed, of course. We are no longer supposed to get snow tomorrow (Saturday). Sunday is supposed to be colder, but also without snow. Monday, however, it now says there will be “isolated flurries”, with rain and possibly another 5-10cm of snow.

Monday is when I have to drive into the city for Case Management about our restraining order.

*sigh*

At least I can be confident the roads will be plowed by then. When I first started working on our driveway, I could hear the reverse alarm of heavy equipment in the distance, so I think the main road may already be done.

For now, I’m going to have another giant mug of tea!

The Re-Farmer