Winter Plus Farm Equals Mud

This winter is mild to far, with only one real snow and a day or two of rain.  People are moaning that we need snow, this isn't right, it's not healthy (?) or pretty.  I confess I am not minding the lack of snow.  I don't relish the idea of packing my car with a Russian winter coat and boots in case I run off the road down into a ravine in the 15 mile stretch where I don't have cell phone service.  We got through last winter without a single snow day.  Old timers like to tell me I moved to New York at the right time, during a warming trend, and how I missed the times when the temps did not rise above zero for a month at a time.  That's okay.  I'll settle for their stories.   I'll deal with the mud.  Oh, do we have mud.   My farm is not as bad as some, as I am on a rocky hillside.  My rocky hillside comes in very handy at times like this.  The flock grazed on green grass on the weekend, high and dry.  The worst place is in the back of the barn, in the pen where the boys, Zack and Jon-Jon, live.  Matt fired up his 1948 8N tractor, the only farm equipment we own, and scraped away a good bit of mud from the giant sliding back doors into the barn.  Andrew was here helping me take care of goats and helped Matt get the door panel back on the rollers and closed, leaving only two feet for the animals to get in and out.  There's no use trying to keep heat in the barn.  It's massive, and I don't have the hundred cows that would keep temps above freezing.  My barn does keep the sheep and goats, chickens, ducks, dogs and cats out of the wind, rain and snow.  We have many windows, long ago broken, to staple plastic over.   I always wanted a big house.  I don't have a big house, quite the contrary, with this tiny little apartment, but I have a gigantic, magnificent, funky old barn.  I came up here looking for the best barn I could find.  I think I found a good one.  I still gasp when I ride over the hill, coming from the village of Brookfield, and see it nestled at the bottom of the piney ridge.  I wish I could care for it the way I would like to.  The farm will be Mia's someday, perhaps to keep as an "upstate getaway," with a tenant to keep it up.  That will be here decision.  In the meantime I'm going to enjoy it, and wear high rubber boots while I navigate the mud.  Out to chores, climbing ladders and dragging hoses, then throwing on something suitable and off to work.  No snow today and that's okay.