For those who enjoy my little stories, this one may be one for the record books! Our region got hammered with about thirteen inches of snow, some sleet and brutal cold temperatures from last weekend to currently. I headed out last Monday to look for photo opportunities after my work closed due to the bad conditions. I drove around for a while catching some general snow photos but I was still hoping for something that would be unlike most Winter photos. Well I started down this hill out in the rural countryside and off in the distance I could see snow being launched but was not sure what was going on. I slowed to a stop and with my longest lens I could see there was a project underway as shown in the top image. Now this is an Amish farm so I figured there was no way I would be welcome here to snap photos.

So I had just turned into the lane when I see a Bobcat headed my way figuring I was about to be told, hit the road buddy! As he stopped to talk to me, I gingerly asked if there was any possibility I could go down to the pond to snap some photos of the snow blower crew in action? To my absolute surprise he said sure your welcome to head on down. There was snow flying in every direction but there was a methodical approach that was well orchestrated. in the long distance photo there are five guys following each other to progressively clear the pond. The second image is my personal favorite because of the sheer number of teens and men at work throwing snow and the two in the middle doing a criss cross pattern were icing on the cake. Something else I started to notice was the younger boys were starting to move in front of me and they would watch where I was pointing my camera so they could slip into as many shots as possible. At one point it was starting to ruin many good shots so I would point my camera one way and as they were moving I would swing toward the real subject and capture the real subject.

I was here well over an hour snapping away and at one point, one of the snow blowers found a thin spot so they backed away and basically created a no go zone. The water started slowing flowing onto the ice and at one point a young man about mid twenties got my attention and asked me to move away from the wet area. I had seen some potential shots with the farm reflecting in the water so I was looking for cool shots. The third photo shows the watery area on the right where I was standing in the water. So as you look at the photo, that patch of snow eventually had water around it on the left side as well so it literally looked like an island as you can see from the actual on my stomach shot before I got reprimanded. So as usual I am focused on potential photos and when the water covered the left side I ended up crawling on my stomach across the snow to get the farm reflecting shot. It was at this point I heard a serious SIR, would you please move off that section, SIR, this is the second time I had to tell you to stay off and I do not want you to fall in and have to be rescued! That section you are on is starting to slowly sink. In his defense, he was wearing a fire fighting jacket so he probably has been trained in potentially dicey situations. I honestly did not have any fear of going through the ice but when he noted it was slowly sinking, I made a hasty retreat. All in all one of those photo memories that I will remember for a long time

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