Happy Friday y’all.

Weird to say, but we’ve still got a lot of ice on the farm and now we’ve got 3.5” of snow coming this weekend. Not normal for this part of Georgia. And I don’t know how you northerners live without helmets on at all times, but we’re all slipping around these days and a few of us are finding ourselves on the ground suddenly.

Turns out that freezing rain, or sleet, or whatever that was, is nothing like snow. With snow, our heaters in the tunnels will melt it off safely, so the weight doesn’t collapse the metal frame. If it’s gathering too quick for the heaters, or if the tunnel is unheated, we can sweep it off with an extension pole and wide broom head. It’s definitely work in less than ideal conditions, but it comes off pretty easy. Ice though, we discovered….was an entirely different animal.

It stuck like glue to the plastic. The heaters barely made a dent, even at full blast. The brooms wouldn’t budge it at all. No purchase. Just slipped across the top. Attempting to knock it off resulted in a broom punching right through the plastic and ripping the top of our caterpillar tunnel. So stress levels picked up from there.

We got out there midway through the storm at 3:30 a.m. After giving up on the brooms, I grabbed a telescoping snow scraper I had purchased and never used a few years ago and gave it a go. It worked okay, but required repeated scraping of the same spot before the ice really gave way and let go of its grip on the tunnel. We at least had a decently functional tool now, but we only had one of them. I took first shift and aside from an hour break around sunrise to eat and rehydrate and stop the muscle spams, I didn’t stop until 9:30 a.m.

Finish one section, then one side, then the other, then go to the next tunnel, and the next. After finishing them all, walk across the farm to the first one and start over. Rinse. Repeat. I can fairly say I was demolished. I laid in bed most of the rest of the day watching crappy movies and resting the old bones.

Mandy busied herself with indoor projects, got a nap in, then took the second shift. The storm slowed, so she ended up surprising me by doing some masonry work in the living room until it picked up again and out she went to scrape the tunnels for another round. All in all we were fortunate and got through it without tunnel collapse, loss of power, injury, or damage to crops. And we got new masonry installed at the wood stove.

The work week has been shorter, because the ice and the train tracks being ripped up, made it impossible for the crew to get here for part of the week.

Mum cuttings are being taken and we had our first flower harvests as well. Mandy harvested a beautiful bucket of anemones and I got a couple buckets of cheerful poppies this Wednesday. Unfortunately, the weather is too bad to actually ship them anywhere, so we’ll be using them for photos and enjoying them ourselves. Spring flowers are coming soon though!

So, let's buckle down and get through this weekend’s weather and soon enough the warmth and light and all the life that brings, will return. The brighter news amidst the overcast forecast, for us at least, is that this coming snowstorm appears to be happening during the day. I look forward to a day of scraping and a night of sleeping instead of the inverse.

Get your snacks in place today, so you can feast your way through the flurry. If you got a hill and a sled, get out there and have some fun. I popped our raft on my attempt at a fun run on Sunday afternoon. We got a lot more distance out of our inflatable swan last year, but alas, she too died alongside a trail in the woods while being dragged behind a golf cart through the snow. It seems like we should just bite the bullet and get an actual snow toy now.

Stay safe and have fun out there if possible.

Steve + Mandy O'Shea