photo blog header_zps71kqewye.png  photo graze_zps8tw4ef8f.png  photo herd_zpsctgnsufk.png  photo farmstead_zpsmyk28rxe.png  photo faith_zpsyq38oy0o.png  photo general store_zpsr2oehrmb.png

Snow

My farmer and I have this fun game we like to play where I tell him that living in Missouri is basically the same as living in Mississippi and then he tells me that living in Iowa is the same as living in the tundra, and then we both laugh like we really didn't mean it but we actually do. 

I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one. Case in point: They have sweet tea in this state. That means it's the deep South. 

Common knowledge.



What Missouri doesn't seem to have much of is good old-fashioned snowstorms.  The first winter I lived in St. Louis it snowed several inches. I headed out to church on Sunday morning only to find there was legit no one else on the road, which made me wonder if I was the crazy one or if it was just that everyone else was. 

Don't answer that. 


Growing up in Iowa meant learning to play and work and drive and live in and with a lot of snow. Snow days were the best -- although somewhat rare because snowplow drivers in Iowa don't mess around -- and I distinctly remember one day where the school bus stopped to pick me up, headed to the next house, and then got the call that school was cancelled, turned right around and dropped me back off again. 

It was like Christmas! Except that it was probably, you know, like October or maybe May.



There was also the Halloween blizzard of 1991 (now I sound like an old timer) where trick-or-treating was basically cancelled because feet, not inches, of snow were piling up. (Those of us hardcore enough to go out were rewarded handsomely because we were the few, the proud, the . . . ok, too far.)

But still, some candy AND snow days? Do you see now why Iowa is a child's paradise?


Then there's the infamous story of my sister who, in a rush to get to the bus, lost one of her snow boots in a snow drift on our lane, but didn't want to take the time to go back for it, and ran ahead to the bus anyway in one sock and one boot. I've never asked if she found the other boot. Maybe when the snow finally melted and the ice eventually thawed . . . so basically mid-July. 

My sisters and I spent our childhood winters playing in massive piles of snow, pushed up in mounds by our dad's tractor; sledding down those mountains after diving into a precariously perched sled and shooting out across the driveway; tromping through our grove where the snow was covered in rabbit and raccoon and deer tracks. 



I'm hopeful my kids can have the same experience here in Missouri at least once every ten years, even if the one-year-old is currently at a stage where he can barely move when bundled up and basically just wants to sit in the snow and cry. It'll come. 

Or we'll just have to visit Iowa in the winter more. 

Either way. 




10 comments:

  1. Haha! I’m like FG in the snow - just want to sit and cry.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is why there are dads: so the moms can stay inside where it's warm. :)

      Delete
  2. I love good old fashioned Iowa-like snowfall! As an Iowa child, I loved mountainous snow drifts, sled runs, snow forts and especially snow days!

    ReplyDelete
  3. When I was a girl, I loved the snow! But now that I'm adulting, I'm much more apprehensive...it just makes more work on the farm, clearing the driveway for the milk truck, keeping water bowls thawed, etc. It sure is pretty, though! Your pictures are beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Isn't that the case? It does lose a little of the magic when we're older, but maybe the beauty redeems it?

      Delete
  4. Being raised in Iowa by parents who grew up in Michigan, we learned to just deal with the snow. But even our family decided to forgo going to church the morning the snowplow slid off the road! :p

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yikes! That's no joke. If the snowplow can't make it, ain't nobody gonna make it!

      Delete
  5. I am not a fan of winter... Being cooped up inside so much, the cold air, the germs that spread to my little germ factory children, the lack of sunshine and Vitamin D. Blah! But...and a big but... snow makes wintertime so pretty and calm and still. And that makes all the other stuff that comes with winter so much more tolerable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Truth. For, like, a day. Then I go back to wanting spring/summer again. :)

      Delete

Blogging tips