Merry Christmas!
I’m pretty sure I can say without a doubt that it will be a white Christmas this year. We got hammered last week-with snow. I’ve been getting asked all week how much we got. It was somewhere in that inch to 10-feet range, depending on where you were standing.
The Boss Man said it was one of the worst blizzards he’s seen. He compared it to the 1978 blizzard, but not near as bad as the 1975 one. I told the neighbor I think the reason he throws out those two years constantly is because I wasn’t born yet and can’t argue with him about it.
Last Wednesday, I made it to cornstalks and with the quality of the roads, I decided to just stay in town for the evening. The four-legged terror and I checked into the Holiday Inn Express and took up the life of leisure for an evening and a couple hours mid-morning. We do not do well cooped up, and both of us were going a little stir crazy within just that short time frame. Thursday morning, we watched from the window while multiple vehicles were getting stuck just getting out of the parking lot before we finally ventured out to check on cows and make the long drive home.
This is one time in my life that I am not fond of the 10 miles of country road. By the next week, it still was not broken open yet, and I’m sure it won’t be for a while. All the work to try and move snow on it is done by the three ranches that are on the road, and even the big four-wheel drive tractors have been struggling.
Meanwhile, I’ve had to figure out a way to get out almost every day, minus one, where it was just not going to happen to check water and cows up at town. The Boss Man would provide an escort some of the time with his big tractor, while poor Jemma and I would plow through areas that we really shouldn’t have been in with my Super Duty. I told him after the first trip up the road that I should be knighted and was going to find a sorting stick so he could do the honors for not getting stuck.
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Maybe other families are different, but on this operation if you get stuck you will continue to hear about it years from now. I could go down the list of getting stuck stories like some people do family vacations. In 2018 we buried that UTV in a snowdrift on the south side of the pivot, but it wasn’t as bad as the summer of 2022 when it got stuck over in that lake bed in that one bull lot.
I didn’t realize until last week how much anxiety the thought of getting stuck gives me. Every single day I was busting drifts, my heart rate was up, my hands hurt from gripping the steering wheel, and it was literally like this decaf girl had drank a coffee pot of Red Bull. Every trip I’d get out or back, I’d let the Boss Man know “I don’t know how I made it this time.”
My luck ran out on Thursday night. I had picked up a pork loin in town and decided I would do the nice daughter thing and take it up to the parents’ to cook and share. We got done eating, and it was just nasty out. We had busted through the road multiple times that day but the 40 mph winds were the worst yet, and within minutes your trail was covered back up.
I left around 8 p.m. to trek the mile home, and yep buried her. Of course it was a place with no cell service. That wasn’t that big of a deal. I was only about a quarter mile from home, so the Terror and I hoofed it. Before I anyone gets irritated with me for not staying with my vehicle, I am more than prepared for instances like this. I have everything in my vehicle for such an event, including multiple flashlights, blankets and even dog food.
The next morning, I got bundled up and was walking on the frozen lake up to headquarters (remember, no cell service and no land line), and here comes the Boss Man in his big tractor to “rescue” me. He had watched my tracker the night before on the way home, saw that it had paused for a bit, and so he went, showered, and checked it after and it showed that I was in the house, so he figured I had gotten stuck. With the lovely wind blowing all night, it literally took hours for me to clear snow with the skidster enough that we could hook up to the big tractor and get my pickup up.
The trackers have been a lifesaver during this storm, and after that night I was almost tempted to call the phone company and have them hook up my landline again. It was short lived. I went to make a call on the shop phone, and yep all the landlines are out again.
Well, we will get to pushing snow this week, and I’m looking forward to another snowstorm and the cold front that’s coming in with windchills reaching -50. That’ll be fun. Meanwhile, I hope that everyone has a safe and very merry Christmas.
Jaclyn Wilson is more than a rancher, raising Red Angus cattle at Wilson Ranch near Lakeside, Nebraska. She’s an artist with a welder’s torch. She holds leadership positions with several agriculture organizations. She can be reached at jaclyn@flyingdiamondgenetics.com. This column represents the views of one person and are not necessarily the opinion of the Midwest Messenger.