Dear Old Man Winter - The Cows MUST Be Milked!!

So we just made it through our second HUGE snow storm at the farm.  Here's a few highlights:

- At 6 pm last night we realized things were probably going to be bad overnight.  As a precaution, we asked our 3rd shift who normally work from 6pm to 2 am if they would be willing to stay until 6 am.  They agreed so we called the folks who were to start at 2 am and told them to stay off the roads until 6 am.  As a side note, it's remarkable that Sheila (who's been milking cows for us for 24 years) and Bernie (our calf manager) had already made arrangements to spend the night at Ken's (our feed manager) house since he lives 1/4 of a mile from the farm.

- We also started our back up generator to run overnight since during windy storms when the "lights flicker", havoc can breakout with the electronic components in the parlor.  For the winter storm we had in December we didn't get things switched over quick enough and we needed to spend $1200 repairing some of those electronics!

- Of course we all sleep with one eye open since it's nights like last night where our phones are more prone to ring with something needing our attention.  Thankfully, no calls last night!!

- At 4:30 am, I was quite surprised that the neighbor we hire to plow our driveway had already been through, oherwise there is NO WAY I would have made it to the road.  My trip to the farm is 1/2 mile on a state highway and 1 mile on a county highway.  Usually, we can count on the plows to start up by 3 am and the trip is no problem.  This morning, that was not the case.  Once I turned down the county highway that the farm is located on I got hung up in my all wheel drive SUV in a pretty big drift.  The real issue was the drift I was stuck in looked pretty small compared to the ones I could see ahead!  Thankfully, I was able to use my women's driving skill to back out of the drift, get turned around and head back home.

- Once back home, I called my sisters Kelly and Stacy to see where they were at.  They both took snowmobiles to the farm and the cows were being atteded to as normal!  It was about this time that I realized the guys I had called off until 6 am were not going to be able to make it in.  My night shift would now be pulling a 16 hour double milking shift!  They were rewarded for their dedication and efforts!!

- At 7:30 this morning, I got word that the plow had been down the farm's road and I was going to head in.  Problem was that after just 3 hours our driveway was already drifted to a point where I couldn't get my SUV to the road.  Again, womenly driving skills and I got back to the garage, hopped in my hubby's 4 x 4 and made it to the farm!

- After about 12 hours of plowing, all the snow is moved at the farm.  We shut down the generator about noon today and even though we offered some time off to the guys who pulled the 16 hours shift, they insisted on coming back at 6 pm tonight for their regular shift. 

- Luckily our milk hauler was also planning ahead and we didn't end up with 2 full tanks during the times that our road was closed.  We have 2 - 6000 gallon tanks and with one filling every 14 hours, had they not stopped in late yesterday, we would have had to shut down (cows would not be happy!) or dump milk (owners would not be happy!). 

So in all, all my sleepless worries last night were for nothing!  No problems with the crowd gate, manure pump, rental house, milk not being picked up.  On top of that, Stacy didn't go into labor, but I think I even had a plan in place for that!  More about that at a future date...I'm off to bed!!