“Things change. And friends leave. Life  doesn’t stop for anybody.” – Stephen Chbosky, author.

Brian and Sandy Adams came over this morning to drop off 50 bales of hay for the big barn,  we are getting another 50 bales in the next week or so. We have six or  seven cords ((almost all stacked up in the wood shed, thanks to Nicole Tanton.)

This will mean we have only one more chore to do in order to prepare for winter – dump some gravel into the Pole Barn and get rid of our donkey manure pile. The heating oil company came to clean and service the heater in the basement, we use it to back up the wood stoves on the coldest days and night.

This is one of the major ways I have changed, or tried to change. I am obsessed with being fully prepared for winter, and I used to not be fully prepared for anything – I always left that to other people, I was too busy losing my mind.

In October of 2003, I moved onto the first Bedlam Farm with a trailer full of sheep, a six-month old border collie, and an old donkey from Pennsylvania. The second day, a Canadian howler swept in from the North, buried the farm in three feet of snow and panicked the animals into blowing right through the decrepit pasture gate and out into the woods beyond the farmhouse.

Before that day, i had never set foot on a farm in my life and knew nothing about  fences, hay storage, ice management and water in -30 temperatures. If not for that little border collie – Rose – I would not have made it through that winter.

For much of the winter, I crawled across a 20-foot ice pack with a hose wrapped around my neck to get  water out to the animals, all of the water lines had frozen solid. I fell down so many times and passed out I lost count, and once had to call 911 from my cell phone after I lay unconscious on the ground as Rose bit my hears to get me to wake up.

They came charging up and over and around the hill and road on snowmobiles, in trucks and cars, all with many flashing lights, scooped me up and pored brandy into me until the color in my checks returned. I think they got a good laugh out of me.

I woke up and thought I was at the circus on the runway. I guess I was.

Rose saved the day, and the week and the next few months.

It was in her blood, she knew how the farm should work, where everyone should be and not be, and even helped me survive the dumbest move of the whole trip – lambing in February. She commanded the sheep with total authority, and I had no more trouble from them.

I did come out of this debacle much wiser, and also traumatized by winter, which can be an experience beyond  the consciousness or experience of someone like me, who spent my entire life in cities.

Still, it was a terrifying experience, and a growing and learning experience. Humbling and challenging at the same time. I swore this would not happen again. it has not. It will not.

Be prepared, and start being prepared in May. By next week, the barn will be full of hay, the shed will be full of wood, the tank will be full of oil, the barn will be full of good and hard gravel for the animals to lie on out of the cold and wet.

We have a great snow plow person,  he comes right away and does good work.

Maria stays out of the way of this, (she does help stack the hay, which I can no longer do) she respects my obsession and focus with it. When winter comes up here, it is sudden, jarring, and it stays for months. We often have the same snow on the ground in May that came in November, even with climate change.

I have to confess that I love the winters and  have no wish to escape them, they define me and the rest of the year, and they make Spring the most wondrous season imaginable.

So never again will I be standing on a farm with my head up my ass when winter comes. For me, it comes  at the beginning of Spring.  We will be ready.