Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Snowflake. It’s been awhile since you’ve hung around here. While I can’t honestly say that we’ve missed you, we do welcome you back. After a recent warm spell we finally received our first real snowfall. It calls for some celebration. It’s wintertime!
Wintertime on the ranch means lots of things. It means snow and wind. It means cold toes and red noses. It means feeding hay and shoveling roofs. But it’s not all bad. The snow also brings skiing and sledding, hot cocoa and soup, and a whole lot of peace and quiet.
By March, the creek’s gentle bubble will freeze in a silent slumber and a fellow begins to wonder if summer’s warm days and late nights ever really existed. But, the creek does thaw, the sun does warm, and, behold, springtime will come again.
For now, we anticipate many days of snow and enjoy the changes that make our ranch special in the winter.
Here’s Clifford saying hello to the strange woman with the camera. Notice how long his coat his getting? All of the horses are getting pretty fuzzy. They need it! Staying out all night up in our Colorado mountains means making it through below zero temperatures.
Justin, Tyler and Randy Sue work in warm gear while fixing up our arena. The arena is bigger and better than ever before. We’ve moved the pig pen and grain silo to make more room for lessons and clinics. Oh, geez, I almost forgot. . . Justin and Ryan now have a roping chute too (I think that might have been the main motivation for the remodel!)
The ducks enjoy some of their last days out in their pond. When the pond freezes over, we move them into the chicken coop for the winter. They are safer there, locked away, since outside they’d no longer have the ability to swim away from predators.