Hayman says the snow this winter is the worst he’s seen in the 33 years he’s been running the farm. (Submitted by Allan Hayman)
At this point, many people in Nova Scotia feel like all this snow is fencing them in.
However Allan Hayman, who runs Riverbed Ayrshires Dairy Farm east of Tatamagouche, has the opposite problem.
In a normal winter, he can let his dairy cows roam his fields without fear of having them wander off.
But this hasn’t been a normal winter and the snow is wreaking havoc with his operation in more ways than one.
“It’s over top of the fences.”
Hayman says the snow is “at least” one metre high. As a result, he’s had to keep the cows inside the barn.
“At this point — very difficult. [The cows] just walk right out over top of the fence. Of course there is no fence because it’s all buried,” he says.
Rain in the forecast presents its own set of problems.
“It might settle the snow banks but what it’s going to do, it will create flood conditions. We’re going to have a lot of water floating around here — we live right on the river here. The first thing that’s probably going to happen, if we get any amount of rain is — with the rivers full of ice, we’re going to have floods. That’s not going to be very nice, I’ll lose my driveway,” says Hayman.
A lot of barns are getting hit hard this winter. According to the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture there’s been $3-million in damage reported this winter to barns and other farm structures.
Hayman says he has had one section of a barn roof start to collapse. He says there were three rafters broken.
He says the snow this winter is the worst he’s seen in the 33 years he’s been running the farm.
“It’s not good. It’s the first time in all my years that I’ve had that happen — that the roof actually started to cave in.”
Escaping cows and a partially collapsed barn are not the only problems facing Hayman.
He says keeping the road clear so dairy trucks can pick up his milk has also been a struggle this winter.
“Oh yeah … we’ve had to plow the road out to the main highway here to get them in and get them out. And that certainly has been a challenge.”
Source: CBC
