Paths in the Snow

You know that saying, "What goes in, must come out?"  That applies here.                                                                                I wrote about clearing a wide drive out to the barn, but didn't show the shoveling I had to do on the other end of the barn.  Because what goes in, has to come out - in more ways than one.  I feed the horses, and they give back manure.  It has to end up in the manure pile, which is behind the barn.  I fill a twenty-gallon tub at least twice each day and pull it through the snow to the manure pile.  Works way better than trying to push a wheelbarrow through snow.  But it doesn't slide gracefully through deep snow - I have to dig a path.  So the first thing I do after a snow is shovel a path from the back door of the barn past the chicken coop to the manure pile.  That's my handiwork on the right, looking from just inside the back door.

I'm not the only one who uses the path.  Little Zoe, the cat who sleeps with the chickens every night, spends most of every day in there, too, when it's this cold.  It's her own private apartment.  I leave the door cracked during the day so she can come and go for her potty trips.  Yesterday she heard me outside and came out to say hello.