Winter snow

It's Monday evening, and Marge and I just got in from checking on our steers and breaking ice so they can drink. We've got probably 8 inches of snow, but it's hard to know where it's blown like it has. Snow isn't bad. I kind of enjoy snow. I kind of enjoy even the cold temps. But I don't enjoy snow and cold temps and a good stiff breeze that's somewhere between 15 and 25 miles an hour. It's not fun in the least. Sure makes one appreciate a good heater.

Both of us have coveralls. But when we put on the coveralls and the winter coats and gloves, we barely can walk. Probably look like penguins waddling along. So we wear our muck boots and winter coats and good gloves and caps and stocking hats. When we get cold we take a break and warm up. I introduced Marge to those hand warmers. She was impressed.

Growing up we spent most of the time out when Dad was out doing chores. Pretty much started with milking the cows by hand. Most of the time Mick and I had at least one or two to milk, and Mom milked three or four, and Dad milked two or three. Mom could out milk all of us. But then we didn't try that hard. Dad didn't either. I think he figured it would take so long so he just went at it. No hurry. There were times when all the cows calved too close together and you could double the numbers. After milking, we had breakfast if we milked before breakfast. After coffee Dad would feed the cows some hay, I remember one year something happened and Marge and I went and milked for them. Marge thought it was going to take forever.

Dad fed loose hay which he had stacked with an old Jayhawk stacker. DuckDuckGo "Jayhawk" and check them out. Pretty neat rig. Dad could sure run that old Jayhawk. Dad had worked up a way to drive his with a C International rather then two horses. Dad never let us run the Jayhawk until he had a heart attack and simply couldn't. Yours truly got that honor. My stacks didn't look very good, but we got the job done. The hay stacks were about 20 feet by 20 feet and 12 to 16 feet tall. Later on after I got married and moved out Mick did the honors driving the Jayhawk.

To load the hay on the hay sled Dad used a long needle which was about 5/8-inch thick with a point on one end and a short piece of chain on the other end. The point kind of looked like the sword point on one of those African tribe spears. It was about 22 to 24 feet long. Dad would push the needle through the stack till the point came out the other side. Then he'd hook a chain on the chain end of the needle and drag it through the stack. Dad would then attach another chain to the end through the stack and flip it over the stack. When he pulled on the chain it kind of peeled the hay off the stack say a ton at a time. Dad would take the top off the stack first and then go down to say a quarter next. It was labor intensive, but it worked.

Once Dad had the hay on the sled Dad would normally drive real slow through the cattle and Mick and I'd pull the hay off the hay sled for them to eat. This was done every day or two. Normally we got done in time for dinner. When school was going on we helped on weekends. Dad did it alone during the week.

Back then we didn't have muck boots and such. We'd shove our normal shoes or boots or tennis shoes down into a pair of overshoes with buckles. Heavy and cumbersome to say the least. Not real warm either. Man we'd have celebrated if we'd had boots like the modern muck boot type. Waterproof and insulated and light. It really didn't seem like the cold bothered us back then. I bought a pair of Canadian Sorrel pack boots with the wool inserts. They were awesome. I still have them.

But I kind of wonder if age has kind of caught up with us or have we simply gotten soft. Maybe a little of both. I love to look at pictures of old houses built in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Really neat old homes. If the homes were of any size they would have two or three chimneys. So at any given time they would be running two or three wood stoves. Most had a stove in the kitchen and one in the front room. Some had one other wood stove if there were multiple bedrooms on the lower level. Most of these old ones had two levels. The top was heated by opening vents from the lower rooms into the upper floor bedrooms. The chimney was usually brick, and it ran up through the upper floor bedrooms so it put off a lot of heat.

The thing with wood heat is it puts off a lot of heat for awhile and then very little heat. So as far as heat is concerned it's feast or famine. One was warm or one was chilly. Marge and I stand in front of our wood stove and our back side is real hot while our front side is cool. But being chilly was part of life back in the early part of the 1900s. There weren't many if any indoor outhouses. Mom and Dad's outhouse was back of the house maybe 100 feet from the house. It was cold. Tractors back then didn't have cabs and heat and air. Many were still using horses to work the fields and feed the cattle. Many were using mules. People were tough. Many a settler would drive a buggy or ride a horse for miles to attend a dance or get-together.

As I've gotten older I've come to realize that an old man needs to be smarter rather than act tough. If I can keep my hands and feet and head warm I'm in pretty good shape. My pickup works just fine on the top quarter of a tank rather than the bottom quarter. I like to carry a change of clothes in the pickup including boots. Doesn't hurt to throw in a couple sleeping bags as well. One needs a good shovel as well. On one of the mountain men show, they talked about having a tent that they could set up and live in if worse comes to worst. Good idea when it's downright frigid. Many times growing up, we had to choose between looking cool and being warm. As I've gotten older I could care less about the looks part. I'll choose warm any day of the week.

I don't sleigh ride or ice skate or have snowball fights anymore. I guess my escapades are a lot tamer. I enjoy sitting in the side by side having a cup of coffee and just enjoying the moment.