huh. that snow day was different.

Every once in a while, I miss living in our old neighborhood. I don’t seem to miss it for myself – I LOVE our open space, animals, and planning and preparing our ginormous new raised bed garden (seriously – it looks like an urban cityscape. Just wait ’til I show you.).

What I do miss, and I realized this yesterday (SNOW DAY!!!!), is our doorbell ringing and on the other side being four or five kids dressed from head to toe in all of the snow gear, only recognizable by their eyes, barely panting out, “Can the boys PLAY?!” Days like yesterday plant little seeds of doubt in my momma heart that make me question if the boys are happy and whole and fulfilled. We all have those little seeds about something-or-other, some-time-or-other, and they suck eggs.

However.

I needn’t have let those seeds grow yesterday.

I don’t remember the last time I saw them play quite this hard in the snow.

I think that there’s always a give and take with major life shifts. Where they had unlimited time and access with their friends in our old neighborhood, we had little time left over for just our family. Now, we’re growing closer and stronger as a family and they’re working on establishing more friendships around our new house.

I LOVE that we’re finding our balance, a revised rhythm, little shifts with each new season, each new snowfall, each beautiful sunshiney day.

And sometimes, I worry about things I shouldn’t. ;) I continue to learn.

Another new thing about a snow day? How it affects our animals. Holy moly. I post-holed my way out through knee-deep snow to check the nesting boxes for eggs yesterday afternoon, and as soon as I lifted the doors, the girls nearly bowled me over trying to get a peek outside.

I didn’t realize that their coop door had become heavy with snow and closed; they had been cooped in their coop for hours. EEEE! I am not a very good farmer. Yet.

I let them walk around and perch on their nesting boxes, eating snow, while I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled and shoveled a pathway to their door, and then had to jam the shovel around the edges of their run to find their water trough.

It was, needless to say, frozen. I dumped out the ice, dragged the empty trough closer to their coop door, and lugged 35# gallon jugs back from the house to their pen to refill the trough.

Farm work is no joke when there’s been a blizzard, y’all.

Also no joke? Digging out a path from the goat shed to their food and one to their water trough, which luckily had not frozen through. For some reason, the goat pen gathered a ton more snow than the chicken run. Yay for a dry snow, though, because it was taller than my knees in a couple areas. I need a snow blower (with an operator). :) We honestly haven’t had snow this deep in about 10 years, so we’ll count our blessings.

On another note, I did manage to load 200# of feed into the truck while standing on a sheet of ice at the feed store this morning, and then carry said bags of feed out to the barn through that deep snow. It’s called Farm CrossFit. If anyone would like to join us tomorrow for our WOD, it starts at 7 am. Bring your boots. The winner gets a hot cup of coffee and maybe a baby bunny.

Booyah.

And P.S. Beyoncè’s growing out his ‘do.

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