The scurs and the Weather Eye called it. Old Man Winter awoke from his slumber and dished up a storm. Will we see a repeat performance this week or will he doze off again? Starting Wednesday, cloudy with a good chance of snow and rain. Highs in the mid-30’s and lows dropping into the lower 30’s. Thursday cloudy with a good chance of snow. Highs in the low 30’s with lows in the upper 20’s. Cloudy on Friday with snow chances diminishing later in the day. Highs in the mid-30’s with lows in the upper 20’s. Saturday, mostly cloudy with highs in the low 30’s and lows in the mid-20’s. Mostly cloudy on Sunday with highs in the low 30’s and lows in the mid-20’s. Monday, partly sunny with highs in the mid-30’s and lows in the mid-20’s. Partly sunny for Tuesday with highs in the low 30’s and lows in the low 20’s. On the 22nd we go over 9 hours and 30 minutes of daylight. The 26th begins the final week of the month. Seems like it just started. The normal high for January 26th is 23 and the normal low is 4.With this forecast the scurs will be tempted to dust off the patio furniture.
Not much happening afield last week although there were some individuals hauling some pack manure before the weather decided to change its mind. With the storm came roughly 4” – 5” of snow depending on location. Also along for the ride was some freezing drizzle that fell after the snow stopped. A glaze was apparent on the snow banks on our trek to the barn Saturday morning. It was probably fortunate as some of the snow tended to stay put and the heavier snow to the west earlier didn’t wind up here as was feared. Not so fortunately the roads were a fright, not so much from being blocked with snow but from being completely ice covered. Cold temperatures prevented the salt from working as quickly as some would’ve hoped and on Monday county blacktops were still icy.
At the ranch we happened to be one of those outfits spreading manure on Tuesday, one of the last nice days before temperatures and precip made life miserable. It was nice to get the lambing barn cleaned and bedded as we’re coming up on busy season in that department soon. The manure came out in big, hard -packed hunks as only sheep can do. It wasn’t frozen so as long as the spreader wasn’t overloaded, it was fine. Rather than hauling it down the road a quarter mile it was easier to put it on the pasture this time. Taking tractor chains off and putting them back on frequently is overrated. It’s bad enough to unhook from the snow blower and reattach that.
And it was every bit as fun as advertised to put that back on Thursday night. Temperatures were around zero so everything was a battle. The hoses were stiff, the PTO coupling wouldn’t slide on the spline and the hydraulic couplings had gotten a little ice in them, making them balk about moving back and forth. My fingers were getting about frozen by the time everything finally cooperated. It had been greased ahead of the storm back in November so at least that part was good. Was still a relief to have it back on after the barn cleaning was done. Wanna storm? Bring it on.
At least the weekend brought an abundance of sports to watch including college basketball and pro football. Luckily we follow the Big Ten religiously, both men’s and women’s basketball. Of course we’re partial to the Gophers but it’s interesting to see who else has decent teams and players too. Probably the worst part is finally prying yourself out of the chair to do the chores again once it’s dark, especially when it’s as cold as it was over the weekend. This storm though on a scale of 1 to 10 wasn’t in the running with a lot of them we’ve lived through out here at the ranch. We were just fortunate though that it didn’t involve a major number of ewes coming in. That takes a lot of the fun out of it.
Instead it appears we’re going to have more of a trickle in effect if what we’re seeing is correct. We had a ewe come in overnight on Monday. Of course it was cold but they were up and at ‘em. Unfortunately the ewe didn’t want to claim one of the lambs so after it was questionable whether it would make it, it wound up in the house where we’d have to deal with it. After tube feeding it I was relatively confident I’d wasted my time so went about my business for the day. Upon arriving home I looked in the box by the hot water jug and at first glance saw no movement. Oh well, I thought. Then it started to move and after moving the water jug it stood up and stretched. So much for thinking it wasn’t going to survive the afternoon.
It was a pretty ewe lamb and aside from a little black dot in the wool (medium grade wool is practically worthless anyway) it had great length, dark points and short, erect ears the way Border Cheviots are supposed to. Hmmm…better call the master of all feed suppliers in Hope to see if they had any lamb milk replacer. Sure enough they did, one bag. “Put my name on it. I’ll be there in a few minutes” I said. Good thing I did too as someone was in shortly after I’d called looking for a bag. A new shipment was coming in the next morning so they were covered. I got home and mixed up a batch then decided I’d see if the lamb would take a bottle. It started out slowly but within about 30 seconds the light bulb came on and it had the program figured out. Just call me Mr. Mom.
See you next week…real good then.