Fern

I have full respect for the coming storm. Experts are suggesting top ten all time, or even biggest one ever! 

Winters have been pretty easy in recent years. I remember much harder years.

Driving to work in minus 30 or 40 temps in a car with no heat or defroster. We kept a portable catalytic thingie on the passenger's seat pointed at the windshield. 

Keeping one tire on the snowbank to keep from sliding down the hills out of control. 

Several inches of ice on the milking parlor wall, from trying to keep the place clean when it was that cold.

Frozen water bowls in our conventional barn. Frozen stable cleaner. Frozen manure spreader chains. Frozen silo unloaders. Frozen every darned thing. Normal three or four hour sets of chores morning and evening morphing into sixteen or eighteen hour days and not really done then.

Earlier years when snowbanks were so tall and wide that Gloversville streets were reduced to one lane and you had to take turns and pray. Couldn't see over them or around them. Holidays when blizzards hit and no one could get home from college in distant states.

However I have lately been second guessing myself. After all, our parents walked to school barefoot, uphill both ways, right? Maybe my ancient memory was tricking me into thinking things were worse than they really were.

However, the almanac shows that the winter of 70-71 was actually the snowiest on record here. There were storms with over 30 inches of snow, so I guess I am remembering those snowbanks accurately after all. 

Turns out winter temperatures were the same story. In 80s when I was working at that farm with the milking parlor with frozen walls and driving that frigid car, some of the coldest temperatures on record occurred. 

Anyhow, I hope you can all stay safe and warm, and my heart goes out to livestock owners facing frozen equipment and monster snowbanks. And if you have to walk to school in this and it is uphill both ways.....maybe you could all chip in for a dogsled and a dozen huskies. Maybe we could all use a nice set of those. I have a couple sets of harness in the hutch in the dining room. 

It's snowing....