Getting Ready For The Snow - Again!

It is snowing in Delaware and Maryland and for the second time this winter season, by all reports it’s going to be a whooper. The weather forecasters are predicting 18 to 24 inches with 40 mile per hour wind gusts and at the rescue, we spent the past two days getting ready for the snow.
Our rescue, located in Warwick, Maryland, is situated on the Sassafras River. It is a glorious setting. In addition to our horses, there is a resident nesting pair of bald eagles, a large herd of deer, a blue heron rookery (very noisy in the spring) and various smaller animals, including a healthy looking fox who occasionally observes the activity from a rise in the lower pasture. We have 60 acres of fenced horse pasture with run-in sheds and our horses enjoy lush grass for 3/4ths of the year.
Most of the time, working at the rescue is just plain fun. We get to play with a variety of horses and have the satisfaction of knowing we are making a difference in their lives. But yesterday and today, preparing for the storm, Elena, Meredith and I had our hands full and it was just hard work.
How do you prepare a horse rescue for a serious winter storm? Since our horses live outside, the priority is always making sure the horses will have plenty of food, water and shelter. This winter, we planned to convert one of our run-in sheds into a seven stall barn but between the non-cooperative weather and lack of funding, our project is running behind schedule. Unfortunately, the current state of the project is making one of our larger run-in sheds unavailable so when we heard that there was going to be another large storm, shelter for all of the horses because our first priority.
So the first thing we had to do was to find temporary housing for several of our horses. Fortunately we were able to send two horses to our other farm in Hartly, Delaware. A neighbor down the street took one in for the storm and a friend of the rescue took another. But that meant that Meredith had to pick up the trailer from Hartly and drive it to Greener Pastures. Then we had to load two horses so Meredith could deliver them to their temporary housing and return for the other horses needing transportation. Of course, one of the horses we wanted to move absolutely refused to get on the trailer and that mean changing plans once again, but finally all of the horses were situated in their temporary housing.
With that taken care of, the remaining run-in sheds had to be cleaned and the four stall barn was stripped and re-bedded with shavings for the four horses that were coming in. Once the stalls were ready hay and grain were moved to the barn from the feed building. Sonny, Bugsy, Daisy and Ozzy then had to be walked down the hill to the barn. They all seemed to be happy to be bedded down and when I left the barn, they were busily munching hay.
Some of the other horses were redistributed among the fields to make sure there would be no crowding in the run-in sheds. Blanket were checked and repaired or replaced as needed. Water troughs were cleaned and refilled, a task made more difficult by the fact that some of the hoses were frozen. Water for the barn stalls had to be carried from the house. Water heaters were checked to make sure water wouldn’t ice over in the severe cold.
The final task was moving hay bales into the fields so the horse would have plenty to eat during the storm. This year most of our hay was put up in round bales. These are much larger than the normal bales of hay and more difficult to move. In fact, these bales are so large that we can only fit one at a time in the bed of the truck and moving them around is awkward. Fortunately Meredith’s husband, Keith, and Elena’s dad, Tony, were around to help with that task.
After six hours of hard work, we were as prepared as we possibly could have been and feeling tired by satisfied with our preparations. When I headed home to get my own house ready (checking the snow blower was my afternoon priority) I was feeling good about our preparations but it was also clear to me that things will be much easier when we finish the barn project. Hopefully this will be the last big storm of the year for the mid-Atlantic region and by next year, our barn will be finished and more of our horses can be housed in cozy stalls when it snows.
Maybe by Sunday the sun will be out and we will be able to take a trail ride out in the snow. That would really be fun!