I don’t think I quite understood the struggle between winter and spring until we moved to the farm. It doesn’t happen every year, and spring always eventually wins, but there’s many a year when winter doesn’t give up without a fight. This seems to be one of those years.

Here at Rohan Farm, I’m much more sensitive to the weather than I was when we lived in the ‘burbs. In the wintertime, that sensitivity is around plowing if it snows tooooo much, loss of power with ice storms, and freezing pipes and water buckets with cold temperature. In the past, we’ve had a horse go through the ice on the pond, lost power for a few days, and plowed snow way more times than I care to remember.

This year, winter hasn’t been bad, but it’s been screwy. After the single digit temperatures of early January, and a busted pipe at the barn, things looked up. Snow totals were minimal, and February was actually unseasonably warm. Then we started March with a wind storm and lost power for almost four days. Since then, it has been unseasonably cold and I am ready for this winter to be over.

Unfortunately, springtime isn’t ready to happen just yet. While yesterday was the official first day of Spring, Old Man Winter decided he wasn’t quite ready to leave, and is socking us with four to eight inches of snow today, or so they say.  There are already three to four inches on the ground, and I think they may have underestimated the total.

The daffodils are up and starting to bloom and the Cherry trees are about to blossom for the tourists. But the pond still has a skim of ice some mornings, and the horses haven’t shed their winter coats.  Today, the daffodils are covered in snow and ice, and the blooms are dying back. I don’t need a ground hog to tell me that spring is still a ways away.  

Both the daffodils and I will survive these waning punches from winter.  This too shall pass.