When a big winter storm is in the forecast, the news pays a lot of attention to bread, milk, eggs, rock salt, and closures. On a farm, the work must be done whatever the weather, and our team needs to prep accordingly!

The number one priority every weekend is checking the water: checking for washouts, making sure nothing’s too high or too low, making sure there’s no water on the dam itself. Team members rotate the responsibility of doing a complete check of entire farm on Saturday and Sunday. “In order to make sure that gets done during bad weather as well, we need to make sure the main pathways are cleared,” says COO Bryan vonHahmann. “In order to do that, we sent the front loaders home with the guys, which meant once the blizzard hit, they were able to plow themselves out and start clearing the main dams. Then the other guys were able to go check the water, reservoirs, bogs, all that. And in the meantime the team just kept plowing. And plowing. And plowing.”

The Equipment/Facilities team also took some precautionary measures, making sure generators ready to go in case we lost power for an extended amount of time. They also made sure the heat was turned up in any vacant properties onsite, just in case. “We also packed the shop with equipment to work on,” says manager Louis Cantafio. “That way, we didn’t have to dig it out, or start it in the cold, or fill the shop with melting snow. We went over all the loaders, made sure they were greased and fueled and ready to go before the operators brought them home.” Then, once the storm hit, they had to start pushing everything. “All the dams where we’re running water had to be plowed,” he says, “but we also had to get all the egresses open and get rid of snow everywhere we needed to store incoming deliveries. It’s no small job, working on this place; the loaders started Saturday and kept on pushing until Monday.”

Another job well-done for one of the best teams around!