Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch.....

The Bag Lady had a very busy day yesterday. She lured the calves out of the hay yard with oats and, after securing the chain that they miraculously unhooked, she tied the gate shut for added security!

Here is the hay-yard after the calves were convinced to go back where they belonged:



Then she fed the cows a bale of hay.


Then she ran into town for her physio appointment and some errands. The drive to town was fraught with danger (don't you love that expression? - always wanted to use it!!) as the road conditions were less than ideal. It was snowing light, fluffy stuff, which swirls around in the least bit of wind. Of course, big trucks on the highway create quite a bit of wind, so there was quite a lot of swirling happening, as there were quite a few big trucks on the highway. It was also very icy in places; especially at intersections in town. But the Bag Lady made it to all of her destinations with only a couple of near-misses (including one on the highway when two big trucks came toward her out of the swirling snow side-by-side, which meant one of them was, inconsiderately, using the Bag Lady's lane and almost side-swiped her!)

She heard on the radio that there have been over 130 accidents in this area in the seven days since New Year's Day! The population of the city is only around 50,000 people. WTF? Winter comes every year, you would think they would be accustomed to driving in winter conditions by now!

She was very glad to make it home safely, but had to turn around and go back out on the highway with the loader to take a bale to the horses who are pastured at the Rancher's mother's place.


It was snowing even harder, but she waited at the highway until she was positive there was no traffic. The loader doesn't go very fast, and she is always worried she will be rear-ended. Fortunately, the worst thing that happened was a big tanker truck passing her so fast that she was blinded by snow for long enough to piss her off!

This is how much it snowed - look at the tracks the loader tires made - it was almost over the top of the Bag Lady's boots (the loader tires are almost chest-high on the Bag Lady):



Once she was finished with the ordeal of driving on the highway, she fed her cows another bale because it had snowed enough to cover the first one.

She was a wee bit surprised to see that the cows had a couple of visitors:

And even more surprised when, despite the noise of the loader, they were joined by another:


Here is a wee sample of what the driving conditions were like:




The Bag Lady had to stop filming in order to concentrate on driving! This was NOT filmed on the highway, BTW - this was on the side road just when she was leaving her driveway.