Snow snow go away

What a day this has been. The howling wind woke us up about 2:30 am, and of course the dogs heard us stirring and had to go out for a pee..... I opened the door for them and quickly shut it again and got into my coveralls and boots and grabbed a shovel to make them a pee trail as there was a lot of snowdrifts that were too deep for Reba to navigate with her weak hind legs.  Not exactly fun in the middle of the night!!!! Got back to sleep for a bit, and in the morning opened the front door to this:

Good thing I placed the shovel right beside the front door after my night shovelling session.

I was plenty worried about the horses as they really don't have a wind break so I headed to the barn after only 1 cup of coffee..... it's usually 2 or 3.... and was wading thigh deep through the snow to get there. I grabbed the calf sled from the wood shed and pulled it down with me as I figured there was no way I could use a wheelbarrow to feed in that kind of snow.  The horses were really happy to see me and plenty hungry but they had to wait while I shovelled a path from the barn to their gate.

They got a couple of bales from my emergency stash in the barn as I had to dig out my haystack.

Won't be using the hitching rail in the near future!!!
The mares did have a lot of ice and snow on them but they weren't shivering. They were insulated pretty well as Loretta shows:

They all had icicles hanging from their flanks and they clinked as they walked.

Coulee looked quite pathetic and she let me know that she was in a hurry to get fed.

I left them happily munching as I went to tend to Beamer. He has a better shelter than they do, but with only him in the pen the snow doesn't get packed down much. I had to shovel from the gate to his shelter so I could get his feed in there.

I ended up giving them a mid day feed too as they went through their morning feed in about an hour. They looked much better this afternoon as there was a bit of sunshine, enough that they shed all their snow coats.

That black thing in front of Rosalee is their water tub, which is about 2 ft. high. I figure there is about 2 ft. of snow where it isn't drifted, and 4 ft. or more in the drifts.

Just over knee deep on me after shovelling.

I had to shovel my way back to the house (that's the neighbour's trailer) so about a hundred yards. Shovelled my way to the woodshed too. Thea was enjoying the paths as I cleared them.

Ted got called out to work for a local plowing contractor, and he gets to bring the tractor home to plow our driveway. I sure hope this is the worst of it over with, but we still have snow in the forecast until Friday. It was a snow day in town with schools and lots of businesses closed.
Now it's time to head back down for the evening feed before dark.....