Before Snow Flies

As you look out the window this morning after shoveling snow for two hours before breakfast, you might be wondering, “Before snow flies? Geeze, Laura, looks like it’s here.” But that last-minute scramble can be a huge deal on our farm. With well over a foot across the barnyard plus drifts, I sure am grateful we managed to get everything done when we did!

First, we were determined to stay ahead of the potato harvest this year, so we weren’t wrestling frozen clods of soil for our crop. The high tunnel was gleaned, and the last of the Brussel sprouts and leeks pulled. After butchering turkeys last Monday, we had hauled their house away to its winter quarters, and all the poultry was in the yard, just about ready to move into the coop for winter.

But it still felt like late fall, with a bright and sunny Sunday, when Steve stopped over and warned us of the impending severe winter weather that was predicted to strike at 6:00 am Monday morning. We all strapped on our chores duds, taped a sign on the front door of Farmstead Creamery telling folks we’d be at the farm and to drive down and find us (football Sundays tend to be fairly quiet anyway), and hit the farm like a four-person whirl wind.

While Kara and Steve helped shut down his lake cabin and haul back the rest of that oak tree we didn’t finish two weeks ago, Mom and I cleaned out the winter chicken coop and hauled in fresh bedding. The terrified pullets were locked out into their pens, waiting for the clouds of dust and noisy shovels to settle. Then we carried over the ducks and added them to the coop. Last year, we discovered that ducks and chickens could winter rather well together, if you could find a new solution for the mess from the water, and the bobcats hadn’t found a way into the shelter. So instead of risking another massacre in the Red Barn, they returned to the land of chickens (which wasn’t appreciated by the pullets at all—get those noisy beasts out of there!).

We pulled up the Electronet duck fencing, rolled it up, and stored it away in the shed, along with the same type of fencing for the garden and the two mobile hen houses. It’s no fun hauling them around in snow, frozen to the ground! The duck houses are short A-frame structures with handle bars coming out the front and back. A person stands on each end and lifts up, carrying the house along like a princess’ litter. So here were Mom and I, waddling along with the duck houses, hauling them off to the edge of the sylvopasture for the duration.

“Hey, they’re off to vacation!” Steve chuckled, as he and Kara rearranged lawn tractors, trailers, mounds of bubblewrap and cardboard that had been stuffed into and on top of implements, and worked the annual Tetris conundrum of how to make everything fit into the same amount of shed space, even though we’ve added a new pull-behind mower, three 250-gallon water tanks, and a pony cart to the milieu.

By now, darkness was falling, and Kara hauled out the skid steer to ferry the cumbersome chicken butchering equipment to the garage. Meanwhile, in the shed, pumpkins and apples for the pigs were packed into barrels so that the hay wagons could be free for loading the mobile chicken tractors. These light-weight PVC structures that had survived the September storm would crumple under a snowload, so we had to get them inside, darkness or no.

With a person at each corner, we lifted the rectangular structures and carried them across the yard and onto the waiting hay wagons, bracing the oversized load with long boards for stability.

“A little to the left, tuck it in! No, the other left!” Kara commands as we back each wagon into the tight space of the shed.

“Two feet, one foot, six inches, two inches, STOP!” I’m in the back of the shed, trying not to get pinned between the hay wagon and the rake. We haul the second tractor over and load it onto the next wagon, making the same delicate threading to snug everything inside.

We pull the white mobile chicken coop right up to the winter coop door, but it’s too dark to see the birds inside, so moving will have to happen in the morning. Meanwhile, Kara’s attacking the bedding pile at the lamb barn that’s holding back the gates. She needs them to close flush in order to drop down the heavy plastic sides, so the lambs can get away from the oncoming weather.

And now we have to get the rest of the equipment to fit into the garage! We’re hauling tires around, sweeping leaves, inching tractors, dragging mowers. Goodness, why does it take so much gear to run a farm?! At last, we tucked the truck inside, shut the doors, and teetered back to the Creamery for some much-earned supper. This was a lot of work accomplished before the snow, and we congratulated ourselves amidst the aches and pains from lifting, hauling, lugging, pushing, tugging, and the rest.

By morning, the snow was coming hot and heavy (well, actually, cold and heavy), and the rest of the work to be done was still ahead of us. My older hens were hunkered down in their mobile summer coops, waiting to be transferred, and already my golf cart was slipping around in the dry snow.

But first, the coop had to be prepared. Between the pullets and the two hen groups (not including the ducks), my 12-by-24 foot coop was going to have to comfortably accommodate 160 laying hens. Last winter, 120 had seemed a tight snug, so how were we going to manage 40 more?

Go vertical! Chickens love to climb up and roost on things, which allows then to get away from the bossy ones. So our job was to create the Taj Mahal of chicken jungle gyms. We braced a long, skinny pallet up against the west wall at chest height, then secured two roost ladders, creating a huge ramp or theater seating arrangement. Then we tacked two-by-twos up between beams and braced an old wooden ladder so they could climb up and then hop about to the different attic balance beams. It would be warm up there, with all the chicken BTUs going.

Then we started hauling fluffy chickens, banding their legs with colored zip ties to remember what year they were born before mixing them all together. Kara looked like a walking snowball with the wind pelting the tiny flakes into her hat and coat as she ferried the squawking birds. We unscrewed the nesting box, cleaned it off, and hauled that into the coop as well. It was turning into a circus of chickens, with hens having spats with pullets and the roosters trying to figure everything out. But fresh straw in the nesting box and lots of places to climb made the coop look inviting to our feathered friends.

Then we had to clean out the white mobile coop. Scrape and shovel, hauling the wheel barrel through the deepening snow. By now, all of our coats and Carhartt pants were soaked. The drifts were beginning to pile. Were we actually going to get this coop put away by the Red Barn? Then determined Kara arrived with the plow blade on the ATV and unearthed a path for the truck to pull it away, literally at the eleventh hour for finishing that job.

By 3:30 pm, we were in dire need of sustenance, which meant that the rest of the jobs were going to happen in the dark. The rams out in their three-sided shelter were pathetically crammed into one corner, so Kara led them back through the drifts to a temporary pen in the barn. The pigs plowed through their banks like little soldiers to get to their dinner we brought, and the hens in the red mobile coop were crammed into piles, so we banded their legs as well and hauled them into the coop as the winds whipped through the barnyard. Heated water buckets were pulled from rafters, scrubbed, and put to use, and the last of the water pipes from Kara’s dairy drained and blown free.

But as we limped back to the house, draping our soaked chore clothes on the heated tile floor to dry, we were so grateful for all the work accomplished on Sunday before the snow started. Imagine dragging those chicken tractors or hauling away the scalder and plucker! This morning, it’s been shovel and dig, but at least all the animals are safe, the equipment is put away, and we’re not out digging potatoes!

Hope you got your projects finished up “before snow flies,” and that everyone’s safe on the slick roads out there. We’re dug out now, so at least we can see you down on the farm sometime this winter.