It's a Good Thing I Had a North Dakota Childhood...

...because otherwise, I'd be utterly overwhelmed by the killer winter we're having in the interior Pacific Northwest. As a kid, growing up in a state with regular Arctic winters that produced deep snows, I learned quite a few winter-survival skills, particularly where caring for livestock's concerned.

(1st pic: My husband, Ed, digging out to the barn. 2nd pic: What I face, trudging to the barn. 3rd pic: House area, encased in snow.)

Good thing I did, because those skills are coming in handy, 40-some years later, when we've got snow up to the rafters on some of our buildings, snow that's over the tops of fences in others. The horses haven't been out of the barn in weeks. There's no safe place for them to go.

I've hauled feed and bedding into the barn on a sled, shoveled snow off the long barn roof, chopped icicles down from the gutters, and tunneled my way to the manure pile. I've worn plastic bags over my socks to help keep my feet warm, and snowpants over my jeans every day for more than a month. I've made sure at least one vehicle was parked where it could make it out onto the snowplowed highway. Those are things you automatically learn to do as a farm kid from North Dakota.

Another thing you learn: The smell of spring in the air. I caught a whiff of it yesterday, as I was de-icing a gutter in a 35 mph wind.

"Chinook!" I exclaimed to myself. "Spring is on the way."