Monday we had a blizzard of the sort that is described in The Hard Winter. At one point, we couldn't even see the sheep barn 40 yards away.
I didn't take any pictures of the blizzard itself, but I got some of the aftermath.
The wind created some very interesting drifts of snow, while leaving other areas scoured down to bare earth.
This was not shoveled, it just ended up like this from the wind.
You can see that by the fence the ground is visible, while back closer to the house, there's a four-foot drift.
In addition to ferocious winds and snow, we had some pretty intense cold. This meant solid water troughs that had to be literally chopped out to reach the liquid water for the animals.
I use this old adze, which allows me to chop the ice while leaning over the fence. That way I don't have to climb over any fences.
Amazingly, we never lost power during this storm, which meant that our Internet never went out. And that meant that my children could do their schooling at home.
They do not like this. I don't like it either. My dining table always looks like this on these days.
A table covered in computers, with the bonus of wet outdoor apparel drying all over the place.
We haven't had much more snow since that day, but the cold has continued. This has made it challenging to get washed clothing dry, thanks to my lack of dryer. I have found, though, that if it's even just under freezing with sun at some point in the day, the clothes will get mostly dry during the day, and then I can hang them around the woodstove at night to finish drying. This way I don't have drying clothes in the way while we're all in the kitchen and around the woodstove all day.
Nocturnal drying.
Hanging up wet clothes when it's fifteen degrees with wind really builds character, though. At least, that's what I tell myself.
This has been an extended period of very cold weather, but it's supposed to start warming up Wednesday, and Thursday we have a forecasted high of 50 degrees. Crazy New Mexico winter, as usual.
There you have it! My (arctic) life, snapshotted.
The sky is so glorious!
ReplyDeleteWow, I would have been online researching a clothes dryer purchase. But I live in Florida and 45 degrees seems frigid now. My formerly northern self would laugh.
ReplyDeletembmom11: Always.:-)
ReplyDeleteRingo: I haven't had a clothes dryer for four years now, by choice. There are really only a few weeks in the whole year that are really difficult without a dryer. This was one of them. :-)