Winning the War

Last week was definitely one for the history books. In my lifetime I do not ever remember a week in late February that was anything like last week. As I mentioned last week I was an involuntary participant in the record setting weather we were having. 

It is all starting to blur in my memory, or maybe I am simply trying to not remember, but the week went something like this. Sunday night and Monday we had an ice storm that we were told was going to be a snow storm. On Wednesday we had 30mph (48kph) winds, that was really awesome. We got a little bit of snow on Wednesday or Thursday, I can't exactly remember which day as it is all one big awful memory right now. Then we got even more snow on Friday. You can see the Friday snow pictures here. To top it off the snow changed to sleet and freezing rain Friday night through Saturday morning so we had more ice. Then later in the day Saturday the precipitation changed forms again and we got 1.5 inches (3.8cm) of rain. The ground turned into complete muck until Sunday night when everything froze up again and has remained mostly frozen since.

I believe the synopsis is snow - ice - wind - snow - snow - ice - rain - frozen ground. This does not happen in middle Tennessee in late February. You can check the history books and you won't find anything comparable. In fact this would have been considered a horrible week in January. 

Jason's Canadian roots were very useful last week. Like most southerners I assumed I was doomed to slipping and sliding around on the ice until Mother Nature saw fit to allow things to melt. Jason had other plans. 

He went to the co-op and bought I think 30 bags of salt. He put the seed/fertilizer spreader on one of the tractors and went to work.  He salted our mile long driveway. He salted around the barns. He salted around the gates and traffic areas in the pastures. He had to do all of this more than once last week as Mother Nature continued to puke her guts out on us.  In total he spread about 1,200 pounds (544 kg) of salt on the farm last week. Our driveway was ice and snow free as were the three barnyards. The pastures in the traffic areas and around the gates were also ice and snow free. We could easily lead horses to and from the barns and anywhere they needed to go. It was nice in an awful kind of way. Nice would have been a normal late February week with blooming daffodils but I digress . . .

Jason was determined to win the war

Jason is not a southerner. No southerner was smiling last week. But Canadian Jason was taking selfies and giving a thumbs up to himself while he was spreading salt (again).

As Jason and I drove to the grocery store last Friday in anticipation of our next ice storm he was appalled as we passed untreated driveway after untreated driveway. He kept commenting on it. Finally he said to me "don't you people understand that in order to win the war against winter you have to get out there and do something? You can't just roll over and play dead. You have to fight winter. Fight it."

I replied in a broken voice "We aren't in the war. We lost before it started. We can't fight winter because we don't know how. Why won't it just melt already? That's what it always does in the past. It melts all on its own. It just melts.  It certainly doesn't keep icing and snowing and icing and snowing.  It melts. It ends. " Envision Melissa on the verge of tears at this point.

Jason looked at me with disappointment and shame. Canadian Jason just doesn't comprehend certain aspects about being southern, and the response to winter is one of them. He repeated a few more times that you have to fight winter. But I don't want to fight winter. I don't want winter. It is one war I'm not going to win because I, like almost everyone else in middle Tennesse, won't fight. 

All schools, both public and private, were closed every day last week. They were also closed yesterday (Monday). Today some of the school systems in middle Tennessee finally reopened.  It may be a short lived return. I just made the mistake of looking at our forecast tomorrow. What did it say? A 50% chance of snow for tomorrow afternoon. Just shoot me now, I'm already surrendering in anticipation of another possible war with winter. 

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Murphy, Africa and Johnny (Dutch napping in the background)

Stormy

Elfin and Homer

Asterik and Gus

Silver and Cocomo

Donneur and Faune

Ritchie and Hemi

Bruno and Lightning