TGIS ... Thank God It's Snowing

It's Friday, but one can forget the, oh, so mundane "TGIF" salutation on this glorious Friday.  For today in Central New York, it's all about its long forgotten cousin "TGIS"... Thank God Its Snowing!  Oh, and it has been so so long. 

Syracuse usually secures between 100 to 200 inches of snow a year. We pride ourselves on so little, but Syracuse Basketball and 20 feet of snow will make our chests swell with honor.

Yet, this year has been different.  No, not different in the way of Lady Gaga or the duck billed platypus.  We've had no snow to speak of this winter.  In mid January of 2012 and up until today (Friday the 13th), this winter has only blessed us with a mere pittance of a wimpy dusting of snow ... for the whole winter.  Now if it seems to you that I'm one of those odd frozen ducks who loves the white frozen happiness that falls so gently from the heavens... I'm sure it was a lucky guess.

Yes, Al Gore's Global Warming has reared it's ugly head in Central New York.  The shame of it all.  We water skied the week before Halloween.  We jogged in early December in tee shirts and shorts.  The horses have been caked in mud from what seemed like the never ending Spring. This has been the first green Christmas since Nixon was not a crook.
But today, Friday the 13th, behold the eternal beauty of snow.  We've had close to a foot of the hardened H2O today and more to come tomorrow, the 14th.   Yes, we're talking the proverbial "Winter Wonder Land" and "The Luster of mid-day of objects below"

We can make snow angels, snow men, snow caves, snow balls and snow forts like we were once again 10 years old with our frosted wool mittens barely able to bend in the subzero arctic cold. 

We can trudge to the mail box watching our foot prints form deep craters in the alien like land ... and then carefully trace our own foot steps back as if to hide from the hounds sniffing the scent of our trail.

We can feel the cold pinching our rosy cheeks like an over affectionate grandma on holiday schnapps binge.

The horses can dance, play and roll in the snow and survive perfectly cleansed, except for the odd little icicles that dangle from their whiskers.

Yes, I love the snow.  Yes, I'm a little different.  No, not like Lady Gaga.

We Live in a Giant Snow Ball

Just off the east end of Lake Ontario, Syracuse New York (the area we live and survive in) annually averages 121 inches of snow. The last few sadistic winters have been closer to 150 or 200.

The recent snows you may have heard about on the national news (we don't brag about much but snow) helped push us to almost 50 inches through December 10th of this year.

My son had 2 snow days off from school and the horses stayed warm inside their cozy stalls for 3 straight days. This of course make stall cleaning more challenging ... but at least we don't have to worry about our wimpy thoroughbreds freaking out because a couple of flakes hit their muzzles just wrong or the wind messed their manes up. A bunch of divas those thoroughbreds are ... always asking for limos, fruit trays and bottled imported room temperature water.

When it starts snowing and blowing, we can't get to our pastures the normal and easy way because we have an eight foot snow drift that drops right in the middle of the desired path. So, when the snow is not blowing sideways, for winter turnout we have to walk the long way around and normally take down some rails to get the horses in. Yesterday, I built a gate to eliminate the rail removal portion of the process. I talk more about our winter snow struggles in my February 2010 post "Equine Snow Angel":

http://bobbienosocks.blogspot.com/2010/02/equine-snow-angel.html

When I went into our shed to get some gate materials, I scared the walnuts out of a squirrel who in turn scared the crap out of me. Apparently, he'd be nesting in the shed for the winter ... the whole thing led me to have an odd dream last night about a talking squirrel, with a trash mouth and anger issues.

Anyway ... we thankfully have a little warm up today. The saying in Syracuse is ... If you don't like the weather ... just wait a couple of hours. There's a big ice storm coming.

The Equine Snow Angel

Winters in Central New York are tough ... it's like jumping into any icy river just walking out the back door some days. With a monstrous lake effect snow machine (off Lake Ontario), on average, Syracuse NY gets dumped on with over 115 inches of snow every year, more than any other larger city in the United States. The towns up here have the tools, plows and salt to keep the roads clear, although not always with laser guided precision.

The plows sadistically knocked our fragile mail box off it's helpless post four times last month. Funny how nobody at Home Depot questions when I buy three mail boxes at a time, knowing that the average life of a rural mail box is shorter than that of a dung beetle in sub zero weather.

If you think driving and living in the snow is bad, try taking care of five horses in the winter. With layers of thick blankets, the horses still do like to stretch their stiff legs all winter long out side, which makes for brutal days of blanket changing, fighting sub zero wind chills and shoveling snow paths to the barn and pastures.

So, while I'm at work enduring the harshness of fluorescent lighting, ringing phones and the heat that just always to seems to be a degree or two off. My sainted snow angel wife is bundling with layers of long underwear, ski pants and fleece like Sir Edmund Hilary on Mt. Everest, to go out into cold. With frequent six foot snow drift blocking the way to pasture, she shovels paths to fields to get our pampered equine snow mobiles out for a few hours of snow play. Of course, there's no grass in the winter, so, she lugs hay on the kids plastic red sleds to our tundra-like pastures.

The cold actually changes the dynamic of stall cleaning. On day's like today when it's 10 degrees out (yes Fahrenheit), the horse poop freezes in the barn within minutes of it dropping from it's heated maker. So, at least, the horses can't grind it into the shavings. The snow's too freaking deep to dump the manure too far from the barn, so it gets dumped in a big pile not too far from the huge front doors. Of course, in the spring, it gets moved to another pile, closer to our unsuspecting neighbors who can't quite figure out why the damn flies are so bad in the hot summer.

Yet, even with the cold and snow, it looks absolutely amazing outside with the happy horses eating hay on the white snow covered field. As steam exhales from their muzzles,icicles dangle from their whiskers like these are mystical polar horses from arctic circle. They roll and dance in the snow like school children ecstatic with yet another snow day off from school.

My wife is a saint! A cold saint ... but a saint none-the-less -- a virtual equine snow angel.