December 2022 to now has been one of the snowiest winters I can remember. Back up to this summer, with the help of neighbors & family we built two new pens to winter cows in and to have more space in the summer. Every year our goal is to make improvements on pens, pasture or another part of our operation. The planning, building and use of the pen before the snow came would never prepare us for how this blizzard would impact it.

With two tractors/snow blowers and a skid steer it took a full day to get all of the pens dug out and gates functional again to even put hay in. Snow piles are plentiful and Miss M. and I spent some time sliding into the cow yard on the large blizzard packed drifts.

Our cows managed the Christmas week blizzard like champs. They are tough as nails but hated every minute of it I am sure. Thankfully it was not during a calving season.

Side note: Calving season has begun!

We previously calved all cows in the spring and had them on two sites (the other site is about 1.5 miles away from home). They say (who is they?… someone smarter than me) that you get wiser as you get older. It took us about 5 minutes to realize that the decision to split calving to two seasons and calving only at home was something we should have done a long time ago! Live and learn!

We now will have 3 calving seasons (let’s be honest… they likely will all run together, and it is just one long season with breaks in calving). We have two calves snuggled in the shed right now and many other cows waiting their turn! We have hopes that we will have a slow melt this spring and a successful year of calving!