Was today THE day?

Bessie and Ruby were going through their "in heat" routine.  I was watching for signs today, because if the right behavior pointed to Bessie being in heat (fertile), I needed to call the vet ASAP.   I really didn't expect to have the vet be able to fit us into his schedule today of all days.  He had to downsize his business, let his secretary go, moved the office into his house, and his partner is looking for a new job.  His closing letter was very sad, because he truly valued both the secretary and Dr. Hall, his vet partner.  All of this happened at the end of January, and the office was moved just this past weekend.....so I was quite surprised when Dr. Morrissey was able to come right out. It turns out that this particular slow time for his business should be a busy time of year.  Farmers who couldn't grow enough hay for their cows had to sell the cows--he was the vet that kept those cows healthy.  Small homesteaders who couldn't feed extra animals sold those animals or had to send them to the butcher.  (Reality almost hit home here, too: Thankfully, Lucy was bought by someone who wanted her for an eventual milk-cow and wanted the Dutch Belted genetics.  Other farmers had no choice but to send their livestock away, and we would have tried to keep Lucy fed if she hadn't sold, but it would have stretched the farm budget almost past the breaking point--and at the end of summer, it didn't even seem possible that we would have been able to scrounge up enough hay for ONE cow!) Back to the cows here, today.  Cows in heat aren't a pretty sight, and I've been careful to describe it vaguely before now.  Here is a little more info, still tactfully shared (I hope!) Ruby was delicately sniffing the air in Bessie's vicinity  (she IS Bessie's calf, but as a calf who has been in heat herself already, she responds to Bessie's heat as if she was an adult).  Ruby was quite interested in Bessie's back half.  Bessie was doing her best to head-butt, kick, or shove her grown daughter away.  (In the absence of a bull, the grown cows will act as if they are interested.)  She was protecting her hindquarters like she usually does, to avoid being mounted.   Interesting fact that I didn't piece together until last time:  There is more milk when Bess is in heat because she is kicking her daughter away, fearing the worst--being mounted!  Gasp! This is the time of their cycle that I like the least, so the sooner Bess is pregnant, the better.  The behavior of cows in heat is just too erratic (Yes, I meant to type "erratic" and not...ahem.... "erotic"!!!) and almost dangerous for my taste!  Skulls cracking or sudden movements involving a 1000 pound cow aren't necessarily the situation I want to be in the middle of.  Dr. Morrissey was on his way, I got Ruby into her stall and Bessie into the stanchion, tethered them both up, and got a bucket of grain ready. Dr. M pulled the big liquid nitrogen tank out of his truck, and I went inside to get some hot water.  We know the routine now--hot water in one cup, cold water in another, while the vet sets things up. The tiny sub-zero tube (straw) of semen was carefully removed from the tank, by way needle-nosed pliers and decoding the location (different canisters in one large tank, each with a separate handle, each holding semen samples for other farms in the area) The straw was thawed in water, inserted in a long hollow metal straw (maybe 18 inches long?), then protected with another slightly larger straw and held inside Dr. M's coveralls so that it stayed the correct temp. We strolled out through the snow and to the cow area.  Bess was still tethered, munching her hay.  I brought in the bucket of grain and she hardly even flinched as Dr. M covered up his arm with a plastic disposable "sleeve" and started checking things out.  Grain is a wonderful distraction for a cow! There was a surge of joy on my part as Dr. Morrissey proclaimed that "Yes, she's definitely in heat!" and then "Everything seems to be lined up perfectly".  No cyst, no lack of muscle tone inside, no empty ovary that a fertile cell had come from too long ago to try the AI. Everything seemed wonderful, easy, and.....perfect.  Last time I'd waited 12 hours too long, and Dr. Hall had been out that time.  She could tell that the right ovary had sent out an egg, and that it had been about the time I called her the afternoon before.  I learn something new every time these wonderful vets come out to the farm..... I was a bit surprised this time, to tell the truth.  Maybe I geared myself up for a difficult time of getting her impregnated.  Maybe I'm congratulating her too early, and it didn't take.  Maybe I've typed too many stories about our stubborn Bessie, and am believing it all as the absolute truth, hmmm?  But, for the vet to very nearly say that the AI attempt with this particular cow went "perfectly".....well, that's something to be truly thankful for. As it seems to happen more and more since moving out here, I was praying during the course of the afternoon.  Not a very conscious prayer, but more like an undertone to everything else that was happening or needing to be done.   Watching for the signs this morning, the prayer was there, but very understated. Seeing the cows lovingly grooming each other, the prayer was in the background, kind of self-serving ("Let it be today".  "Let the vet be available.") Driving to get Jeremy before the vet came out, the prayer was playing in my mind ("If it's not today, Lord, please keep me aware for the next time.  Don't let me lose heart.  Show me what I'm supposed to learn from the success or failure.....") Waiting for Dr. Morrissey this afternoon, the same ("Lord, I would love it if today was THE day.  But it's all in Your hands, please remind me of that!") As he described the near-perfect timing, the prayer was more thankful and ever-so-hopeful. So, now we wait.  At least 21 days, to see if she comes into heat again.  If there are no signs, then we wait until the end of March for a pregnancy test.  If she's pregnant, then a calf should be born in November.  Not great for a calf to be born just as cold weather sets in, but I'll be grateful and thankful, no matter what.  If our difficult cow is truly "bred" and expecting a calf, I'll do what it takes to give that little calf a great start on life. "Lord, it's all in Your hands.  Please remind me of that!"  :) Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

Water!

There is so much moisture in the air that flourescent lights in the barn don't want to come on.  There is condensation on every hard surface inside the entire barn, including light-switch plates and the plastic hanging against the cement  walls.  When I picked up a shovel yesterday inside the barn, the handle was slick with drops of water.   The torrential rain is dripping down through the barn roof where the shingles have worn away, through the floor of the hay loft (the second floor) and dripping from the ceiling beams in the first floor!  I am SO glad that I've been pulling down the moldy drywall and damp insulation from the first floor ceiling, because if all the recent moisture was trapped inside the insulation, there's no telling how much more mold would be growing out there! All the 5 gallon buckets under the drip-line outside the barn are full.  The cow-trough is full.  The 55 gallon drums in the barn are full.  We'll need to keep it all from freezing, but there is a rich blessing of fresh water everywhere that we needed it. The ground is so saturated that there are puddles with nowhere to drain away.  The pasture is so saturated that, when Rocky runs, he flicks up showers of muddy drops (so, if you're walking with a wheelbarrow full of cow stuff, and he runs enthusiastically past you, you will be showered with cold muddy water as his paws hit the ground.  Yeah....., personal experience!) Despite catching and saving all that precious rainwater in buckets, troughs, even pots and pans, I probably wasted as much water yesterday before the rain started.  The outside temps were up around 60 degrees, so the hose was reeled out to the cow-trough to fill it up.  I was going to run the hose for half an hour (should normally fill the tank in 45 minutes or so), then turn it off when I went to pick up Jeremy.  Not knowing how much rain would actually fall, I wanted to make sure that the trough was filled while it was possible to run water through the hose, before temps got back down to freezing.  Jeff and Michael get SO tired of lugging 5 gallon buckets of water from the bathtub out to the cow-trough every evening! Well, Shadow had to be let out at the last minute, and then I was already running late, and....the hose was left on for the 45 minutes that I was gone.  (Meaning, it filled the tank and kept running long enough to have filled yet ANOTHER tank, except that there wasn't another tank!)   After the drought this past summer, this seems excessively wasteful to me!  (Our water comes from an underground aquifer that spans at least the county, if not a good portion of the entire state (depends on who you talk to!)   Jeremy put it into perspective, though, as he hopped into the car at school. His comment as I was berating myself for wasting all that water?   "Well, Mom.....it all goes back to the same place anyway, so don't feel so bad about it".   He's right.  At 10  years old, he understands the underground-lake concept where our water comes from, and he's right.  If not for the electricity to run the pump which brought the water up through our well, that excess water is going right back where it came from, filtering down through layers upon layers of dirt and rock to refill the aquifer that so badly needed a fresh supply of water. And there are certainly more important things to occupy my mind than the water that I can't reclaim, no matter how hard on myself I think I need to be! Now it's snowing.  It seems that we've had weather from every season except summer in the past 48 hours! Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

A Predator in The Midst

Photos:  Almost hidden in the dark of the barn, an unsuspecting chicken with a death wish cuddles close, surprise at being on Jeremy's arm, and....finally, back where he belongs! I went out last night like usual to tuck all the critters in for the night. Kitties came running for their food (I throw some cheap cat food to the chickens every night for extra protein to keep them laying, and the barn cats know that they can sneak a few mouthfuls before the birds flock to the feast!) The chickens were busy feasting on the dry cat food that I had tossed onto the straw (quite a sight to see 90 sets of tail feathers up in the air in a tight pack as they gobbled up the treat.) I grabbed the bucket to fill with evening grain for the cows, reached for the metal scoop that hangs on a hook under the chicken roost.....and let out a gasp! Took my tired brain a second to realize what I was looking at.  A little feathery bundle with upright "ears" was perched on the chicken's roost.  Eyes were squinted shut, face was almost whiskery with tiny feathers, and, if it had been on a tree instead of perched against a backdrop of poopy-drywall, I probably wouldn't have even seen it. I dashed back to the house and hollered out "Hey guys, put on a jacket and shoes and come out to the barn right away!"  Their response?  "What happened?"  They thought one of the cows must be dead or some such thing. I grabbed the camera and assured Jeff and Jeremy that nothing bad had happened, and to come on out.  Jeff said "Well, maybe THAT's why we don't have a mouse problem!"  Maybe.....  We got some pictures, and I dared to use the flash a few times.  A chicken flew up to her customary roost and nudged close to the owl, not realizing that she was so close to a killer.  The owl shifted to the very end of the roost, and the chicken shifter closer.  (This is a chicken whose judgement might be in question anyway, as she's been acting strange lately and might not last the winter.....Still, you don't roost next to something that could eat you!) We think he must have flown in the one missing window pane on the doors to the south entrance.  I realized that if he started flying around after the lights were out, he was small enough for the cats to take down because he might be confused as to how to get back out of the barn.  They've easily caught robins and other small birds that have gotten into the barn and were just trying to find their way back to freedom. I got him to step up onto the edge of the metal feed scoop, and next thing I knew he was on my coat in the crook of my elbow.  Not what I intended, with those owl-y talons gripping into the down filling of my nice coat. Jeremy was fascinated and wanted to try to hold him, so we carefully transferred him to the crook of Jeremy's elbow instead.  None of this would have been happening if there was bare skin involved, for sure! Jeremy and I brought him carefully outside, because by now his eyes were wide open and he was very watchful of where the cats were.  We made sure to keep the cats in the barn as we left (and they appeared immediately, of course, after effortlessly jumping out the missing window-pane and coming to join us!) Carrying the little owl on a branch, we carefully brought him to the ancient willow-tree and he hopped off the branch and onto the tree.  I was worried that the cats might have followed, so I tapped the trunk of the tree behind the owl a few times as he hopped up higher and higher (kind of like nudging the back of a toad to get him to hop to safety) When we headed back inside to warm up, he was safely above our head-level in the willow tree, up where the humongous trunk splits into 3 or 4 massive sections of the tree. This morning, Jeremy checked on him and he was gone.  We had decided that if he was still there, then he wasn't healthy.  If he was gone, then he was well enough to fly off and hunt. It turned out well.  Would have been sad to find a huddle of feathers or a sickly owl to worry about.  Jeremy was prepared to nurse it back to health, but I'm sure it's a protected species or something, probably illegal to keep one, so it's best this way. Looking at photos in our bird books, he appears to have been an Eastern Screech Owl, although the measurement of 8 1/2 inches long seems larger than what this little one was.  They can exist in areas with mature trees (which we have plenty of), and can sometimes live in someone's yard for years without ever being seen or noticed.  If he lives in our trees, we might have never known he was there except for one unfortunate side-trip to land him inside our barn.  If he lives somewhere else, we are grateful for the chance-sighting and hope he gets home safely. Quite exciting! Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

Fooled by Rapunzel

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!"  And....if you watched Sesame Street, you can probably remember that scene with the prince voiced by Guy Smiley!)  ;) Ruby got her way yesterday in true princess-fashion, after all of my planning to keep her in the stall for the morning was shown to be for nothing.   She was left there to start the weaning process, instead of being let out immediately after I milked her mama.  I waited until about 12:30, went outside to set her free, and.....there was the stall, the latch was still closed, the sides were intact, but no Ruby inside of it.  A small tuft of black fur on the gate told the story:  She'd jumped the gate.  Not quite like Rapunzel letting down her hair from the tall tower, but still.  It makes a good story. I can only imagine the banging around and temper tantrum that she threw before discovering that she could just hop over the thing.   But, good thing about it:  It emphasizes that we chose the right thing in NOT fostering another calf.  Imagine if we had someone else's calf, and Ruby was able to so effortlessly thwart our attempts to let that new calf nurse from her own mama.  It would be a constant and daily battle to get enough milk into the foster calf while trying to scheme against the wily young Ruby.  No extra stress needed, that's for sure!  And now, if she's hopping out of a stall with walls higher than 4 feet, our family milk supply is in danger! Remember when Ruby was born, and we had started closing her in the stall at night in order to get milk from Bessie the next morning?  Ruby outsmarted us then, by sticking her head through the slats of the stall and emptying Bessie's udder anyway.  I declared war at that time, and we won.  The reward was that we got the milk we needed, and Ruby got her fair share after ours was taken. Ruby already staged another uprising last night, after I shut her in for the normal routine:  "Come for the bucket of grain and fresh hay, close the stall door, and you stay right there in your cozy stall until I let you out in the morning".  I hung around a bit to see if she would try anything, and sure enough, I heard a bit of crashing and banging.  Next thing I saw was her curious face peering out around the door of the barn----definitely NOT in the stall. So today there is no milk, and I will work to make the stall into a "tie-stall", where Ruby walks in, gets tethered with a short lead to a hook on the wall, and can't back out or escape.  No worries, Jeff and I have talked through how to anchor the hook into a board that is securely fastened to the wall-studs on the opposite side of the wall, so (hopefully!) there is no chance that she tears out a section of the wall with her next tantrum!  Hmmm.....that would make her more of a Samson than a Rapunzel.  That could be the story tomorrow if all does not go as planned.  "Entire Barn collapses after insolent calf gets her way" with the side-line "Calf causes her own homelessness".   She'll toss her head and stamp her hooves and probably buck and kick around all night long, but I will NOT be thwarted in my determination to work towards weaning her.  War is hereby declared again, and we WILL win!  At some point, we'll be able to outsmart a determined 7 month old heifer!  If we win this round, there will be milk for the family tomorrow.  Something worthwhile to fight for!  :) Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

Princess Ruby's Wild Ride

Well, the title is really a combination of two worthy titles for today: Rocky's Wild Ride And Princes Ruby Stamps Her Hoof Ruby had to deign to drink from a bucket of water this morning.  She flicked her tongue out distastefully, and slurped up a bit, but she was NOT happy.  She had waited all night for mama's milk, and her petulance was obvious as she discovered that the normal routine would be thwarted by a gate with a latch that wouldn't budge..... But let's back up a bit. The morning started normally.  Jeff and the boys left for school and work.  I took Rocky out to the pasture for rodent-patrol, while Shadow had to be on the dog-cable near the house (her spine and back legs aren't fully healed yet).  I came in and had my home-made yogurt and some coffee for breakfast and got the milking supplies ready. Rocky was impatient, and decided to hurry up his normal routine a bit, so instead of waiting for me to allow him into the cow pen for rat-patrol while I milked Bess, he squeezed through and was barking incessantly at Bessie (who hates him!)  Made me wish that I'd left the electric fencing hooked up to the charger on the main fence, so that Rocky's wet nose would have gotten quite a shock as he barged in. He was worked up, and acted like he wanted to go back to the house, so I took him by the collar and opened the gate.  As I turned to latch the gate, he wrenched away from me.  I ALMOST grabbed the tip of his tail, and he tucked it gleefully and took off full-speed.  I had no idea where he had gone, except for the huge pawprints in the snow up to the edge of the farm-field to the south of us.  Grrrrr.....   There are two houses within a mile of us that have chickens, and both of them would be relatively easy coops for a determined high-prey-drive husky to rip into.  There are horses in various fields that might be delightful to chase.  And.....I should have been milking at that point, but now I had a prodigal dog to hunt down.  I was listening for gunshots, to be quite honest, and thinking that he probably deserved it. As I went out to the car, I could see Rocky enjoying a full-speed run out in the farm-field, and called to him as if I wasn't furious with him at the moment.  Surprisingly, he picked up speed and looked absolutely glorious as he ran full-out towards me.   I was prepared:  I had 3 slices of bakery bread in my hand, he braked himself just as he would have bowled me over and literally wolfed all three slices down.  I used that opportunity to grab his collar and make sure I had a firm grip.  No urgent calls to the Husky Rescue today.  (If he ever did get out and kill or injure someone's animals, we'd be making a quick call to the rescue to see if we could surrender him to them.  Probably an inevitable fate, after this morning's eye-opener). And back to Princess Ruby. We decided NOT to foster a calf.  The vet answered a lot of questions, a big one being how to wean Ruby.  It wouldn't be a quick couple-of-days like I naively thought.  If I was still milking Bessie, and there was milk to be had, Ruby would go to great lengths to keep nursing.  It would be chaotic (in my opinion) to keep Ruby away from Bessie and a foster calf, and would disrupt the peaceful little routine that we have going here.  Last night, I looked at Bessie and Ruby, mother and daughter, both of them standing inside the barn with frost on their whiskers and eyelashes, and imagined Ruby being shut outside by herself, starting tomorrow when the foster calf would arrive.  Even if it wasn't frigidly cold out there, I don't want to do that. So....change of plans.  Fostering a calf is out.  Weaning Ruby is still the task-at-hand.   I set up the grain and alfalfa for both mama and heifer calf.  I milked Bessie and put some Bag Balm on her to protect the exposed sensitive areas from frostbite (and calf-bite!!!).  I shoveled manure.  I brought out a bale of clover-grass hay and put it in the shelter that Jeff built.  The cows hang out there all day, until I let them back into the barn at night. Ruby tossed her head impatiently every time I walked past her stall and didn't let her out.   I brought her a bucket of water.  She sniffed it and tossed her head. I gave her some hay that Bessie left behind last night.  Ruby stamped her hoof. I made sure that the latch to the stall door was secure.  Ruby reached forward to snuffle in my face in impatience. There was none of the usual prancing out of the stall and diving beneath Bessie to nurse, because.....in the interest of Bessie's teats not getting chewed up quite so much, and in the interest of helping Ruby to grow up and not need mama's milk, she will now be spending mornings in the stall and not running free.   Mama and baby will not munch the fresh bale of hay together.  Bessie gets it all to herself until noon. Mama and baby will not huddle together against the cold until after lunch-time (although it should be noted that Ruby has an exceptionally thick coat of calf-fur, and her stall is in a snug and relatively wind-free corner inside the barn).   Ruby will not be nursing except for during the afternoon, and will be lured back into the stall each night for the usual separation from mama.   The time of separation each day will be extended over the course of a few weeks, rather than instant and prolonged separation (that's what we would have needed to do to accommodate a foster calf!)  Ruby's separation will consist of being kept in the stall progressively longer over a period of weeks, rather than being shut out of the barn by herself. I'll start monitoring how much milk Bessie has left after just an afternoon with her greedy princess of a daughter, and will begin milking her in the evenings when it's necessary.   It's a start, and will not be terribly upsetting to the normal routine of things.  For the  eprived little princess, it might turn out to be an emotionally wild ride.  We'll see what temper tantrums we have to deal with!   For the rest of us, it's not too much different than the usual routine. Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

Bessie.....a suitable foster Mom?

We may be taking in a foster calf.   We need to wean Ruby, whose teeth are getting a big dangerous for the health of Bessie's....um.....teats.  Blood on my hand during the milking the other day freaked me out until I realized it wasn't coming from me, and then I realized why poor Bess had been trying to kick my hand away.  Ruby's teeth are leaving neat little cut-marks on a very sensitive part of Bessie's anatomy! Anyway, the original thought was to wean Ruby, who is now 7 months old and NOT needing to nurse anymore, and put a new calf on Bessie to drink up all that fattening milk.  The new calf would probably have been a day old male dairy breed, because there isn't much use for them and they go for about $100 each.  We would buy one from a client of our vet, when there was a calf available.  He would be raised for beef, nothing else.  We'd have to name him Burger or Steak, or Jeremy's favorite French word to pronounce wrong:  Filet Mignon ("Fill It Mig Nun") The thought of those affectionate brown calf eyes getting to my heartstrings has me second-guessing whether we'd be emotionally stable in a year or so after loading a one-and-a-half-year old steer into a trailer and getting him back as freezer beef. Still, we need to wean Ruby, for Bessie's well-being, and there's all that milk that would dry up or need to be hand-milked, or.....could be put towards raising another calf. Honestly, the once-a-day milking is a wonderful concept, and I'm not too eager to give that up.  Putting another calf on Bessie would keep that morning milking going, but I wouldn't have to add the evening milking again.  Ugh!!! Another consideration:  One milk customer isn't able to keep ordering from us because of scheduling conflicts, so we're also going to have 2 gallons of extra milk a week. Strange, but the very next day after I got this news, I was talking to a farmer in South Barrington who has beef cattle, pigs, chickens, and (fairly recently) dairy cows.  A calf was born a few weeks back, and he would be willing to let us try to foster it and pay us a daily fee for doing it.  It would help him to keep most of his cows' milk going to his customers, it would help us to have a little extra cash-flow to cover some of the hay expenses, and it would help Bessie to have a much younger calf benefiting from her milk.  It would be good for the boys because they've both agreed to help to earn some of that money.  It would help us in the grocery department if we could work out a deal for some beef, pork, or even pork fat (to make lard) instead of being paid the full amount (yet to be decided).  It would actually help Ruby, too, if she graduated to hay and water and left the baby food behind, but she wouldn't agree with that!   The foster calf would stay for 3 or 4 months, and then be picked up to return to the farmer's beef herd (a dairy bull calf would be "banded" at that age, become a steer because he would then be missing the part of his anatomy that technically made him a "bull", and be raised with the beef herd to fill the growing demand for grass-raised beef in the Barrington area).   Some adjusting of things out in our cow-area would need to be done before this can happen, and stall/stanchion arrangements reinforced, with an area set up for Benny (the calf).  Makes the most sense to give Benny the stall that Ruby has been in, but that puts Ruby outside.  Still thinking through the logistics of how and where each cow will bed down at night.   So, the only question that remains (besides whether I'm crazy to even consider this in the middle of winter!) is whether Bessie (stubborn, Queenly Bessie-girl) would deign to let another cow's calf nurse from her poop-encrusted udder while Ruby wails in the background! The farmer and I will talk once more on Thursday, and if all seems to indicate a "Go", Benny will probably arrive this Saturday.  He is a Guernsey---rust-colored and white, I think, and probably about 100 pounds. Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

Signs of Spring (?)

An e-mail from a magazine I'm subscribed to sent out a message with this same title, minus the question mark.   The signs of spring here are questionable, except for: The ducks are showing signs of wanting to make babies, after a quiet winter of leaving each other alone. One goose has started experimenting with making a nest and laying a huge egg every few days.  The gander has become more watchful, and is making a scritchy-scritchy ear-splitting noise as he guards the female.  He also is warding off the cats who just want to walk peacefully through the barn, and one barn kitty is missing a few tufts of orange hair on her back after getting into an angry tussle with him. Three chickens were fooled by the short warm spell, and are stubbornly and fiercely sitting on nests, even after I gather the eggs each day (other chickens are piling into the nest boxes with the die-hards, laying eggs that the broody hens then claim as their own).  They are so determined to hatch a brood that they let out a terrible screech when I walk past (to warn me away), fluff up ALL of their feathers, and do an Angry Bird imitation that makes me laugh.  Luckily, I'm wearing gloves as I gather eggs in the cold barn, and what would be furious pecks that bring blood only land on the fleece of the gloves instead!   On top of all that, all three have foolishly pulled out all of their breast feathers to line their nests, so if they decide to give up the cause of being winter-mamas, they will be chicken-sicles as the frigid air hits their bare skin.  ;( We're back to having Jeff and Michael haul 5 gallon buckets of water out to re-fill the cows' water trough again, after the relative luxury of being able to run water through a hose while the weather was up around the 50's a week or so ago. Rocky is entertaining himself these days with huge pieces of icicles that have fallen from the barn roof into the pasture area (icicles must be even more fun for a husky than running at full speed and scooping mouthfuls of snow as you run). And any melting snow that drips off the barn or house roof freezes again very quickly as it lands in the 5 gallon buckets meant to catch water run-off...... No, spring is not here just yet! Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/