Sunday morning chores. Layers. And layers. And more layers. Ski goggles. Gator. Hat. Gloves. Boots. I open the back door and the wind nearly whips me and the door across the yard. The grill cover has split straight down the center, it flaps, flips, flits. Add another line on the to-do list. I descend along the slate steps of the shoveled path and then make a right, diagonally and down, toward the three-stall barn. The snow is six, maybe eight inches deep. Not that it matters. It’s frozen solid, I walk across the top of it, not a crack or a tread or a break on the white-out sheet. Come on, Shackleton, let’s go.
Unhook the latches of the wash stall and dump three buckets of feed into three feed tubs. The hose has been put away for the winter so I squeeze another bucket under the hot water spigot and try to keep my hands and feet out of the way. One wrong move can kill you out here. Hot water steams into the feed tubs. My fingertips are numbed already. I switch gloves and pick up the three tubs, bracing for what is to come.
My boots hit the frozen dirt of the cleared path on the way to the front field. My breath fogs my goggles. I can’t address that. Can’t fix it. Eagle Poise, Apse and Kissin Conquest, the three amigos, trundle over broken shards of snow, it looks like a triangle lesson, white chalk on a whiteboard. Scalene. Isosceles. Acute. Obtuse. Equilateral. I hang the tubs on the top black board and noses crash into the warm soup. They’re grateful or perhaps I just think they’re grateful.
I give each a once-over, visually, sliding my hand inside their blankets, for some reason. Habit, I guess. They look good. Safe and sound and settled. The greenish/brownish liquid drips on the top of the snow, like splattered paint across a canvass. I turn to the wood shed and scoop dry food for the cat and flaxseed for the goat. Duchess and Eli. They both stand and stretch as I slither into their hut, sliding the door shut as fast as I can, trying to keep any heat inside. I turn on the light and leave it on for the day, trying to generate every watt of heat. I don’t dare look at the thermometer. Again, they’re grateful, or I perceive gratefulness. Either way. Doesn’t matter.
I huddle behind the wall of the goat shed and wait for the horses to finish, stack their tubs for the walk back to the wash stall. The northeast wind stifling every step, punishing every push. I pour hot water over each tub and flip them in a line along the back wall. There’s a sheen of ice where the water hit just minutes earlier.
One more task, hay for the front field. The Gator turns over on the second try and it clatters over frozen ruts to the back shed. Toss two bales of hay in the bed and cross back over those same ruts, around the driveway, open the gate, shut the gate. The horses are moseying on their plowed paths. I drop flakes of hay like I’m leaving clues for a treasure hunt and fill two mangers for the day. Hopefully the night. They dive and delve into the newest nourishment. Again, grateful.
Surely, they’re grateful.
