State of Emergency Declared

I have declared a state of emergency in Rupert's pen. The rapidly melting snow has left his house with standing water in it...so, Rupert the refugee has been moved back in with Buck, and he is happily vacuuming up scraps of hay that Buck left behind at breakfast time. We're going to move his house in the summer, and will add a raised wooden floor and matting.

We need to do some tractor work...the driveway needs scraping, but I need Mike to put the blade on the tractor. Everywhere is wet and slushy, and I have abandoned my snow boots for wellies. The untouched snow is still knee deep though.

The VHF airwaves are abuzz with truckers predicting an early break up this spring, due to the warm weather, and I noticed this morning that there are load restriction signs on the main roads already, although they're all at 100%. As the ground thaws, heavily loaded trucks do huge damage to the roads. Log hauling shuts down every spring, and you can't get a full load of gravel until June.

I saw two Canada geese flying by this morning...the first we've seen since September.