From the Home Place

November 29, 2025

Wow, what a beautiful day! The wind in steady at 20mph, gusting at 46mph, the temp is 8 degrees and feels like negative 19. With an inch of snow, mostly in drifts, we need to attempt to find a bugle cow today. Some people just get to have all of the fun.

This snap reminds me of a storm in 1968. We had fed everything really well on a Saturday morning, expecting the weather man to be correct about the “winter weather outbreak” he was forecasting. We pulled 25 head of yearling ewe lambs into the north corral at home for extra protection. That corral had a good wind break; the best we could offer them. These girls had their full coat of wool on and could stand a lot of cold. It would probably be a disadvantage to put them in a barn with all of that wool as they would get too hot and start sweating, which would turn their wool to ice in the extreme cold.

Dad and I carried in plenty of extra wood, watched the ten-o’clock weather, which sounded like we were in for a doozie, and went to bed. At around four a.m. Dad charged into my bedroom and sternly stated, “Get your clothes on, we have a problem outside!”

I scrambled to find all of the warm clothes I could find; remember, back then we didn’t have insulated coveralls and snow boots. I pulled a pail of Levis on over my long-johns and a coat, a Scotch cap and chore gloves. With five-buckle overshoes over my boots, we stepped out of the porch, into a three-foot drift of fresh snow!

We pawed our way to the old shop where dad handed me a scoop shovel and told me it was going to be tough, but our yearling ewes were drifted under in the north corall. We pawed our way that direction, the wind was blowing at a steady 40-to-50 mph and it was still snowing hard. We finally found the top of the eight-foot windbreak that the girls had to be next to and we started scooping the hard-drifted snow as fast as we could.

I can still feel the sting of the snow blowing against my face and the adrenaline rushing through my veins. We shoveled as fast as we could straight down to the ground, no sheep. We moved over about six feet to the east and started digging again, one of us from the top, one from the side. This time we found a lamb, which we assumed to be frozen stiff.

We drug her into the previous hole we had made, and dad started beating on her with his scoop shovel. To my amazement, she moved and he told me, “Drag her to the barn and get her on her feet!” So I headed for the barn, dragging a 60-pound lamb, caked in show, up this snow drift and back down, up another snow drift and back down, again and again. We finally made it to the barn, I shovel several feet of snow out of the way so we could get the door open, drug my little friend inside and sure enough, she was ready to get up and take a run at living. I headed back to dad.

We repeated that process with all 24 more lambs. After the last one was in the barn and on her feet, we finally stopped to breath for a few minutes. By this time there was getting to be a tad-bit of daylight, so we started morning chores. Milking, separating the milk, and feeding the saddle horses, milk cows and calves what hay we could dig out from under the snow drifts.

Back to the house, mom had hot coffee ready. We both sat down long enough to drink our coffee and eat some pancakes and bacon. Dry clothes back on and headed out the door to check on our little gals in the barn. They were all up chewing on their hay, so we carried several buckets of water for them, after chopping a hole in the six inches of ice on the tank.

After digging some more hay out for the critters in the big corral, we made our way back to the house, exhausted! We knew we needed to go feed the range cows and the rest of the sheep, but we couldn’t even try until the storm broke. Finally, about noon, we were able to head out to feed and check on the rest of our critters. They were all Wyoming-tough and smart about windbreaks. We fed all we could find and headed home for evening chores. I have to say, as crazy as that day was, “I still miss days on the home place.”

That was a tough storm, but life is seldom easy. As Christians, we still have to deal with winter storms, and emotional storms. This ‘ol world is not our friend when it comes to trying to make a living in the ag industry. Yet, I’m grateful for those who are still putting food on our tables, and to our Heavenly Father for His provision and protection. This would probably be a good time to stop to praise Him for getting us through all of the storms we have faced over the years, and to ask Him to help us deal with this first bite of winter we are dealing with today!

Life isn’t easier as a Christ-follower, but it sure is a blessing to know that our Lord walks with us through whatever kind of physical, emotional or spiritual storm we have to face. After all, He has promised, “I am with you always.” Oh, by the way, sometimes others need us to help dig them out from under their storms as well.

Weathering life’s storms with you, Neal