if this isn't nice

We got some snowshoes. We wanted them for recreation. The snow is either too deep or too crusted over to use our cross country skis, so we thought snowshoes would be a good option.

Turns out they’re valuable equipment for winter on the farm, too. They’ve been great for getting to the back granaries to look for stored tools and materials, and to trek out to the compost pile through the drifts coming in off the garden.

It was a rare sunny, calm day today and around -16°. We had the rare luxury of not having any drifts to clear from the driveway, so we strapped on the snowshoes and put up some snow fencing as an experiment in drift management. It didn’t Jake long so we went for a walkabout around the yard and along the trees at the south edge of the quarter.

We could definitely use some tail attachments for more buoyancy in the softer snow. It’s more than knee deep in lots of places, and breaking trial is hard work. We switch off and breathe easier when we hit the patches that have crusted over from more wind exposure.

It was a gorgeous day for it. And I realized I’m so happy to live somewhere that I can confidently eat a handful of snow, knowing it’s clean. What an instant reminder of childhood that sensation is!

These are the snowshoes we got: MSR Evo Trail. We got a pair in Ranger and another in Iron. We like the strap features and the colours. They’re really easy to put on and take off.  They work well up and down drifts and keep us pretty well aloft even in deeper snow, though we’ll definitely invest in the tail add-ons at some point.