I guess it had to happen sometime...

Mother Nature decided to send winter to visit us.  (I say visit, because Sunday it's supposed to be 50' again.)

Don't know what made me decide to check on the horses early today, but I was very glad I did.  Got to the farm to find that G had moved in a new bale for the horses, but the horses were nowhere to be seen.  No tracks in the new snow, either.

So I grabbed the halters and set off in search of the missing.  Sure enough, the gate out into the big cow pasture wasn't closed.

Do you see what I see?

That's right...

Ponies amid the cows

Stinkers. 

The cows said, "Ooh!  A scary person!"

The horses decided that the cows had the right idea.  It didn't help that the wind was blowing straight at me, making it hard for them to hear me call.

Run away!

Thankfully, the pony part of the equation stopped almost immediately, Sunny whinnied at me, and then the two of them headed back my way.  I caught Sunny first - the cows quick-stepped it for parts distant, and Thunder contemplated going with them.  Not good.  But he didn't really want to get too far from Sunny and I collared him before he'd had a chance to get far.

A prancing pony in each hand I started back - they were plenty wired, and I had my hands full. All the practice the three of us have had leading together this year paid off today for sure - if they weren't used to leading on either side and respectful about keeping slack in the leadropes, I'd have lost them a couple of times.  Complicating matters, the new snow covered over the many holes in the cow pasture.  Thunder and I managed to avoid them all, but Sunny stumbled into a shallow one and came up in a poof! of snow.  No damage done, thank goodness!

Back through the open panel into their pasture, another exercise in horse-juggling since we couldn't all walk through at once.  No place to secure them and the electric gate was down, too - so it was on through their pasture and up to the top lot.  I locked them in and they had a drink and a chance to scavenge the morning's windfall corn from the base of the big grain bin while I went back and secured the pass-through and restrung the electric gate.  Once that was done, I let them out again and they circled a few times while I cut the twine off their new bale.  They must have been tired from their adventure, because they settled down in a sheltered spot with their butts to the wind.  Nap time.