Soule: Overcoming The Winter Ice

My barnyard looks like an ice-skating rink, neighbor Marianne swears her driveway is an Olympic-quality bobsled course, and Facebook friend Janice Dobson told me her mini-horses are skating on the ice just like her. Hmm, ice-skating horses. Do we have a new Olympic sport? If so, New Hampshire horses are getting a lot of practice this winter.
During that recent winter-heat wave, the muck in the holding pen thawed, so I decided to clean it out. That was a bad idea because the concrete floor was soon covered with three inches of water. The farm's drains and runoff paths were still frozen, so the holding pen became a catch basin to all the melted snow that had nowhere else to go. The next day it froze.
When I fed my cattle in the morning, I noticed a few skid marks where a brave bovine had tried her luck on the ice. I spread sand on the ice to avoid a cow-wreck, but I don't have a way to sand the entire pasture. I wonder if the cattle will develop skating skills like Janice’s mini-horses did?
Last Saturday a family visited the farm wearing serious-looking cleats strapped on their boots. Worthy of climbing the frozen Frankenstein Cliff in North Conway. I was jealous and determined to find a pair.
An alternative idea appeared in my email in-box. Jim Duncan sent detailed instructions on how to take an old pair of hiking boots and screw hex-head, sheet-metal screws into the soles and heels. That method sounded promising, so I forwarded the email to husband Bruce and put an old pair of my boots next to his desk. No movement on that front.
I also got a bunch of emails from folks who were fortunate enough to own a pair of NexGrip boots, the boot I wrote about last week. Then Sue Gibb from Bootleggers in Meredith emailed that she had a pair at the store in my size.

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Carole Soule is the co-owner of Miles Smith Farm in Loudon, N.H. She raises and sells beef, pork, lamb, eggs, and other local products. She can be reached at cas@milessmithfarm.com.