Cold and Old

I am old, yes, I have decided to go ahead and admit it, own it and not try to deny the fact that I am becoming old. This past week the bitter cold only confirmed that I am old. I think the air is colder these days than it used to be. In any case I sure seem to get colder faster and take longer to thaw out.

During the artic blast I watched as non-livestock owning friends posted on Facebook about hiding under a thick blanket, sleeping in, watching football all weekend and generally avoiding the outdoors. The thought that I was indeed crazy went through my head as I bundled up in several layers to face the frozen tundra all the while praying that we did not have any new lambs.

We are lambing, someone in management made the decision to move lambing up this year. The past couple of years late December, early January have been warm and looked like ideal lambing weather. We also have a need for earlier lamb, so the decision seemed to be an easy one to oblige the rams and kick them out a couple of weeks early. I have I ever told you about my unerring sense of timing?

To compound the situation, I had the chance to buy some heavy bred ewes that would start lambing in December. This all seemed to be a great plan early in December when the weather was unusually warm and dry. The ewes were really springing, and it looked like maybe we had predicted this whole thing right. I was smug in my management decision making.

This smug feeling came to a crashing halt when the forecasters predicted a major artic blast for the week of Christmas and New Year’s. Words like the coldest temperatures in twenty or thirty years were thrown around along with warnings about being out in the cold. I find it funny that they cannot predict precipitation with any accuracy, but they are seldom wrong about the temperature. We were told to bring our animals indoors. The new house is bigger but not that much bigger and Jennifer seemed to frown upon the idea. Even bringing them into the garage didn’t seem to be an option.

That prompted an all-out, all hands-on deck offensive to shore things up and get ready for this bitter stretch of weather. The kids just loved spending their first few days of Christmas break getting ready for the deep freeze. In any case, the barns were lined with straw and we hung every heat lamp we owned in anticipation of lots and lots of new lambs.

The ewes were sorted and resorted so those closest to lambing could be stashed away in the lambing barn where it was insulated and warmish (we managed to keep it about thirty degrees even in the coldest night). The other ewes that might lamb were placed in the open sided barn and those who were not close were given bedding and told to hunker down. It was a fast and furious week of preparation but in the end, we were well prepared or as prepared as you can be for negative twenty below.

Each time I trudged out in my many layers I asked myself how it could get so cold and why exactly I was out in it. The most perplexing thing was that the sheep did not seem to be cold at all and even seemed to enjoy watching me suffer. The worst of the whole ordeal was the afternoon Tatum and I spent chopping enough space out in the water troughs to be able to run enough water to give everything a drink. The one major flaw to my new pens were the water troughs. Frost free waters are in the next phase of the construction and not planned for this winter and running extension cords was not an option. Chopping ice is probably a pretty good post-holiday exercise program but it sure did not seem that way on that afternoon.

We managed to get through the coldest of the weather with only one set of hardy twin lambs born. They were born in the lambing barn and oblivious to the bone chilling cold outside. Mercifully all the other ewes decided to hold off (probably waiting on worse weather to come if my luck holds true). We had a couple of hydrants freeze but other than that nothing worse than my whining about being cold.

I also realize that by writing this and complaining about being old and cold I have probably just jinxed us into the coldest, worst winter in recent memory. Therefore, I am putting myself into the witness relocation program at an undisclosed tropical location. Who am I kidding, with the farm economy I can’t afford to travel to southern Kansas let alone somewhere warm. I guess I will just buy a thicker pair of gloves, more wool socks and dream of spring.