I can’t be sure but I think March is that ‘in like a lion and out like a lamb’ month, though it could be April. In any event, it absolutely roared its way in.
I’d been hearing reports of a snowfall from co-workers and there was talk of doing the photo shoot for next year’s farm Christmas card utilizing a prop I had in my shop. The prop was a huge 6’x’6’ box made out of pink insulation board and painted and ribboned to look like a giant Christmas present. It was to be placed in the snow, which we were hoping to get before the end of the winter, and then have one of the horses stand nearby as if there was another one in the box? Anyway, it was big enough for a horse to fit in.
I’d talked to a couple of the women planning this photo shoot…I was to be the photographer…and warned them that if we did have a snow, the temperatures were mid-thirties, which meant the ground would be mud underneath and that it likely wouldn’t stick long – or at all.
“And remember…if there is a snowstorm, I’m the guy who has to remove it from the parking lots, service drives, pasture gates and sidewalks. It takes me several hours,” I said.
I set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. since a heavy snow had started to fall before I’d gone to bed. Good thing. I woke to 8 inches of the wet, heavy stuff on the ground in the valley, which meant probably more at the farm. I made it there by six and began moving the biggest mess of snow of the year. Around nine, I ran into one of my photo shoot organizers.
“Looks like this is the day!” she said gleefully.
I frowned and said, “I’ve got a couple of more hours of snow removal and the wind is gusting quite hard. If I take that box built like a kite outside, it is going to blow all to hell. It’s only glued together,” I reminded her.
“This may be our only chance,” she said.
“Well…if you want the box in the picture, you’ll really need to wait for a calmer day,” I repeated.
She looked disappointed and I headed outside to do some work on our electric fence line. The wind was howling, making my job almost impossible and as I tried I realized there was absolutely no way to bring the prop out intact. If we did and it blew to pieces as I was sure it would, it might also scare the hell out of the horse and that’s never a good thing. We did have a huge ribbon on top of the box though and it occurred to me that maybe we could take it off, put it on the horse and take a picture that way saving the box for another day. I was sure there would be more snow and better conditions before the end of the season.
“We’re going for it now, John,” my photo organizer said as I walked back in the building.
Now I was annoyed. Not only was she ignoring any advice I had on the conditions and what they would do to the prop, she wasn’t allowing me time to finish snow removal. Normally I go along with anything they want, but this was ridiculous. But I was outvoted.
I went back to the shop and began shoveling away the two-foot drift blocking my garage door – the only way to take the box out. When the committee gathered and saw what I was doing and felt the wind whistling, they began to worry. Full steam ahead at this point though.
I placed boards under the box so that we could lift it and went over the spot where we hoped to take it about 50 feet away onto some snow covered grass across the service drive I’d plowed already. Six people began the process of carrying it out of the garage, but as soon as we cleared the door, the wind caught it and in three minutes it was no longer a box, but instead five pieces.
The ladies stood in horror, trying to hold their pieces as they attempted to move airborne as a kite might. Exasperated, I managed to get end up with two pieces they held while we walked the horse, laughing hysterically at our antics, near enough so that I could take some pictures, which I did.
We returned the pieces back to the shop after the shoot and the photo organizer and the CEO both said to me, “you were right. We should have waited.”
Ya think?
My workout for the day was the snow removal. My joy for the day was acknowledgement that I could actually be right about something in the face of the farm community’s collective thinking.
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