Cob Jockey

"Our winters haven't been too bad the last few years. It's sweatshirt weather through Christmas, then we get about 8 weeks of winter but the snow never sticks around for more than a few days, then it's spring." - my words last year to our newest boarder who moved here from Las Vegas

Yeah. About that.

Normally we have two miles of visibility from the top of this hill, which is my driveway. That's not fog, that's heavy snow.

Over the previous two days, we got the biggest single snowfall I can remember in all my decades of living in Indiana and Illinois. 11 fluffy inches. A mind-boggling thump of snow for this part of the world.

Dogs for scale

Even more mind-boggling, it's not supposed to melt. Like, ever. This is the land of 4" snowfalls that melt within 3 days, so it's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that we're not going to see grass until maybe February.

Mr. Canada is like whatever

In previous winters, when I lived in town, I've always tossed around if I should sleep on the couch in the barn lounge during winter storms, but I never actually did it. With this storm though, the roads were virtually impassable for 36 hours and a travel ban was put in place. I've never been so grateful to live a softball throw from the property line and to be able to tell all the boarders to just stay home.

Even for a very fit CrossFitter, walking through deep snow spiked my heart rate big time.

The barn owner is away, which meant plowing fell to me for the first time. Thankfully my partner helped me unbury the snow blade the BO had hidden at the back of the equipment barn, because wow, we may only use it once every few years, but when you need it, you really need it. This would have taken forever with just the FEL.

Between the blade and the bucket, I slowly got it done, which took me most of the day. That's a skilled task, getting snow off gravel, and I wasn't awful at it, but I know I'll get better at it over time.

I made circle drives in two different parts of the parking lot and told the boarders they are just going to have to appreciate the snow median until spring.

The horses thought the first day was great fun, when we only had about 6" on the ground, but when they came out to 11" the next day, they were all like "...nah." Nobody played and everyone just stood around and ate hay. Our old man OTTB who moved here from Las Vegas moved so slowly through it, I thought he was injured at first. He wasn't, he was just despondent, lol.

Back in November, my Minnesotan BO put snow sticks around the driveway for the first time in the eight years I've boarded here, and I joked then to the boarders that my BO almanac said we were in for a rough winter. I didn't know how right I'd be!

So here we go...a proper winter. I guess if I still enjoy taking the care of the barn on days like this, which I (mostly...I had my moments) did, I know I'm really meant for this.