The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Winter seems to have been playing “Hide n’ Seek” for the past couple of weeks. To be honest, I wasn’t trying very hard to find it either! I counted the warm fall days as one less day of winter or one day closer to spring. I was enjoying the clear moonlit November nights as we walked switch cows across the yard wearing just sweatshirts and ball caps. It just made me want to dance across the yard with joy.
The warm sunny days felt more like September than mid-November. It was strange turning on the tractor’s air conditioner as I chopped corn stalks for baling.
There were so many fun things I wanted to do but I knew we were living on borrowed time. Winter was going to come out of hiding with a vengeance and we better be ready.
The forecasters had been calling for a major weather system to come across our way by the end of the week.
We’ve heard this story before. Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong. It all depends upon where the pressure systems travel.
We might be on the edge of a little or a lot depending which way it swung.
We were hoping it wasn’t going to be as bad as they predicted. They got this forecast right. Apparently winter was tired of playing hide ‘n seek and called out “ready or not, here I come!” Luckily we were almost ready.
These past 48 hours have been filled with finishing up summer projects, washing equipment and winterizing cattle sheds.
Every morning after milking and chores Mark and I would compare lists as to what needed to get done.
I had to finish getting the leaves off the yard. The garden had to be cleared for tillage work and strawberries needed to be tucked in for the winter. Of course there were still windows to wash.
Mark needed help finishing his repair job on the cable fence behind the shed. He had already jackhammered out the cement around the old rusted posts and replaced them.
I had to help him string and tighten the cable fencing once the new cement had hardened.
Then we needed to finish cleaning up the heifer sheds and bedding them down.
The final touch was to close up the windows and anchor down the plastic walls to keep the north winds from whistling through the sheds.
Fall field work has gone very well here on the sand plains of central Minnesota. All the low spots have been worked and ready for spring rains.
The summer manure piles have been spread and worked down across chopped corn fields. Large round bales of corn stalks have been stacked and tarped in a very long pyramid.
Because the tractors have been in the fields so much this fall, I haven’t been able to clean off the mud splatters, dust and grim blocking the view out the windows.
You don’t really notice how dirty the windows are until the afternoon sun hits the windows at a perfect angle and you are suddenly driving blind.
No matter how much you squint your eyes or shade your face, you can’t see where you’re going as you bring another load of bales in the yard for unloading. You just hope you’re driving straight between the fuel tanks and the short row of calf domes.
That was enough of that. Before I headed back out for another load, I grabbed my window cleaner spray bottle, a wash rag and a pile of newspapers. While the guys placed bales on the racks, I start washing windows in the field. I’ve only been able to get a couple of tractors clean and a few of the barn windows cleared off but at least I have the living room and dining room windows in the house polished up for winter.
Now we can watch the winds whip snow across the yard from the comfort of a warm house and clean windows.
We have made it through another growing year with no major incidents. The barns are full of cattle, the grain bins are over flowing. We have much to be thankful for as we head into the holiday season. Ready or not, here they come!