2-1-11 Blizzard

Throughout the last week of January meteorologists predicted that we would have snow during the first week of February. Initially it was a chance of snow, then it was nearly certain that there would be snow, and then we went through the progression of winter weather advisory, winter weather warning, winter storm warning, and then, on Monday afternoon, they switched it to a BLIZZARD warning. I had never been in a blizzard in my life! (My daddy argued with me and said I'd been in several blizzards when we lived in Colorado. I was two when we moved from there, and so that does not count!) I was deeply concerned for our animals and how we would cope with such a terrific storm. When I arrived home from work I immediately set to work preparing for the worst. (The weather was still beautiful, though the temperature was dropping.) I cleaned out half of our enclosed back porch, which we use for storage, in case Wayne agreed that it was the best place to put the goats. I made sure the chicken house was as air tight as possible, and I loaded up the goat's manger with hay. Wayne did agree that we needed to move the goats to the back porch, and we proceeded to pack them up and get them moved. We also brought enough food for three days for all the animals into the house, in case we couldn't get to the barn. We put Wayne's dogs on the back porch as well, but in separate quarters. For the goats I lined the floor with several layers of newspapers, and then a good four inch thick layer of hay. We used a sheet of plywood and part of an old bunk bed to contain them. Here are the goats enjoying their snug accommodations:

Even though I had completely covered the newspaper with hay, Miracle just had to pull up the newspapers and chew them up! Thankfully, she got bored with that after the first day or so.
Our back porch is fully enclosed, but obviously not perfectly air tight. I've never thought of it as a drafty place, but check this out:
Note how God graciously left a clearing for us to be able to open the door. How cool is that? He also did it around the chicken house:

See the snow on the window sills as well as Miracle's whiskers? I'm inclined to believe she got the snow on herself by putting her face in the snow that had blown in through the cracks around the windows. None of the other three had snow on them like she did.

Here is how I barricaded them into their half of the porch:

...aaaannnnd! They barricaded ME inside! This was NOT a fun moment. There was a huge boom, and I came running. They had reared up on the sheet of plywood and knocked it over. My screen door opens out, so I couldn't open it.


Here are some pictures of the drifts. There were bare spots in the yard, and there were places where the snow came to my hips, and I'm 5'8".

Note the chairs on our back porch.

The drift in front of the barn had to be at least waist deep. I tried to get through it and fell down and had a really hard time getting up. I decided I didn't need that chain I was going to get after all!

This drift across the back of the house was every bit as deep as the one by the barn. Thankfully, we could walk around it to take care of the chickens.

I'm SO thankful we put the goats on the porch. Here is what the blizzard did to the goat pen:

It would have taken several hours of digging to be able to get into the pen. Their gate opens inward, so I'd have had to dig a path to the pen (remember the waist high drift?) and then climb their fence and dig the snow out from around it. It makes me sick to even think about it now! There was so much snow in there (it was blown in the entire length of the pen) that they could very well have frozen to death! I think our coldest night was -19* actual temperature + the wind chill.
I originally expected the goats to be in the back porch for two or three days. It ended up being 13, and we had to work HARD to get them back outside even then. ALL that snow had to be shoveled out of their pen so that it didn't melt and form shear ice to be slipped upon. Here is the pen all cleaned out with the goats basking in the great outdoors:

And the back porch, pretty well cleaned out. Note the "cleaned" walls. They stripped the backing off that sub-siding stuff. I'm just praying it doesn't cause birth defects!


Wayne caught these deer across the road from our house one morning.