Snow Drifts on my Future Home

This is the West End of the barn where we plan to live as soon as we can come up with the money to finish the apt. This will be the back side where we planned to put a door but look at those drifts! The front side, facing the hill and views, is also drifted over. Hmmmm. Will have to put some kind of snow screen around the doors. I am only four hours from where I used to live and I feel like I am in Northern Vermont. I've got the snow, the wind, the cold, but no tourists or skiers. I feared the noise and smell of snowmobiles coming through but I have only heard them once, across the valley. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of cars that pass by each day, but the plows keep the road totally clear. People at school complain about the roads the same way they did in NJ, and have the same driving anxieties, so I am right at home. Chris Kupris, former owner and dairy farmer, is still in the house he was born in next door, which is kind of cool. He is full of stories and advice, like where not to park my truck under the barn roof (a snow slide totalled his one year). I thought it would be cool to live around so many dairy farms, but the cruelty of raising milk smacks me in the face every time I drive out of here. Bull calves are taken from their mothers so the milk can be sold. They are tied to cold plastic huts far away from the herd where they can only look at where they want to be. I see beautiful animals standing knee deep in mud around empty feeders, not a blade of hay to seen. There are a few grassy hillsides where cows graze, and fortunately I pass one of them on route 80 going to Sherburne. Matt says it must be an organic farm because there are weeds in the field. I try to buy organic whenever I can to support these brave people who buck the dairy lobby. I plan on buying my own cow and raise my own milk...but what happens when she gives birth to a bull calf? I will face that dilemna when I come to it and, in the meantime, try to get used to soy milk (ugh!)