Snow Painting. My Farmers art project.

I’ve had quite a few people ask me what we were spreading out in our fields on top of the snow this last winter. (the snow is all gone, thankfully, and last winter is all just a blurred memory) What we were spreading on the fields, was reused limestone. We put it on the snow on top of the wheel-lines to melt the snow. This is why…

When the snow is deep enough to cover the pipes on the wheel-lines, it can cause a lot of damage. As the snow settles, especially if it has crusted on top, the snow will pull the pipes down with it. When this happens, the pipes can break. One winter, the snow put so much pressure on the wheel-lines as it was settling, that it actually flattened the bottom of the wheels, along with breaking pipes. It was pretty incredible. The pressure has to be pretty intense to do that. That was the same winter I talked about in my post about fixing fence when the posts were pushed into the ground. My Farmer used to collect all the ashes from our fireplace through out the winter and spread that out on the pipes, but he never had enough ash to do all the wheel-lines, so he would end up shoveling a lot of them out. Way to much work. A while back we decided to try limestone. We always have lots of it stock piled on the ranch because we apply it to our fields in the spring to adjust the ph of the soil.

We found that it works really well for melting the snow on the wheel-lines. The lime we use is recycled. It was first used to coat seed. What we get is the throw away after the seed is coated. It’s always so colorful, blues, yellows, greens, purples, and pinks. It’s like we are doing an art project on the farm, snow painting.

The snow was so deep this year and the limestone did such a great job of melting the snow over the wheel-lines, that we actually had trenches. Out of all the wheel-lines, my Farmer says there were only 2 broken pipes. With all the crusted snow we had, that is actually pretty amazing.

The snow was crusted pretty well when we they started spreading the lime, so they were able to ride alone side the wheel-lines with the 4-wheeler and spread it out. My son used the snow machine when the snow started to soften up. This method is way easier then shoveling them all out by hand with a shovel. We have about 10 quarter mile lines of wheel-lines. We used to have a lot more. That was a lot of shoveling for my Farmer. I am sure it was my idea to use the lime, but he remembers different. Well, whoever’s idea it was, it was a great one. It was mine, I’m sure. I will let my Farmer think that it was his. That keeps everyone happy here on the farm. And we have to stay happy, because, after all, we are….Livin’ the Life, the Farm Life that is.