so much snow

It's great to see that the snow has finally melted some. We're going into our third week of solid snow cover. I never remember a winter like this before.
Izzy [the Australian cattle dog that is my constant shadow] and I went for a bit of a walk off the snow plowed path yesterday. This is the first in weeks that we ventured far from where it has been plowed. The snow is still too deep to get to the apple orchard to prune. The rows of trees act as a giant snow fence and so it can really pile up especially in the orchards. Perhaps when we have a little more melting action we will snow plow a path to the compost area. It's a short walk across a field to get to the apples from our compost spot but a rather long hike from the farm house.
We were a little overly optimistic about how much snow our truck and snow plow could handle. A few days after the last big snow we got we thought we would hasten our accesses to the orchard by plowing to the top of the hill. The drifts were way too much for the truck and plow to handle and we succeeded in getting the truck very stuck. After about one and a half hours of digging with skid steer and shovels and pulling with a tractor we managed to uncork it from its drift. I thought it wise to put my big tall boots on and go for an exploratory walk to check on snow depth before trying that again.
Thank goodness January was so nice and we made significant progress in pruning the apples. We have a lot of catching up now to do in order to finish before all the heavy Spring work begins. Apples can be pruned in the winter as well as later in the Spring but if we don't finish early enough it messes up our timing for pruning the peach orchard and all the other activities that Spring down on the farm brings. Peaches do not like being pruned in the winter. We generally prune them beginning the tail end of March through April. It would be lovely to be done with the pruning by bloom time so we can get into the orchards with our tractor and sprayer and not get tangled in all the prunings on the ground. This however, is a rarity. It is not uncommon for us to be pruning when the peaches are in bloom or shortly after. Ah- the smell of peach blossoms. I can almost smell them now. Just the thought of being surrounded by all those flowers brings a smile to my face. I'm sure looking forward to seeing the ground again.

on the ground to destroy the equipment.