Farming in the frigid north; or, lessons in the fragility of life

Every morning, my routine here on the farm begins with outside chores. As dawn breaks, I don extra wool socks over my regular socks, then winter boots, a thick coat, leather work gloves, and a hat. I may have grown up in Wisconsin, but after four years in Texas, and another four in North Carolina, I readily admit that I've forgotten just how cold it gets here. With a cold front firmly settled over the Midwest right now, this past week has definitely been a period of reeducation for me.

Nevermind their warm winter coats, the bucks insist that they are not fans of the lower temperatures.

A few mornings ago, I was greeted by a temperature of 11 degrees below zero fahrenheit. For my friends in the south, I need to describe how there is an instinctive feeling of danger at that temperature. I step outside, and everything is perfectly silent. Then I hear--and see--myself breathing, and my breath starts to crystallize on my beard. When a branch breaks in the woods, the sound crescendos, carried through the still air with a peculiar dry snap. Then I feel the cold start to spread from my nose and ears, and inward from my fingers and toes. As I go about my morning routine, I stamp my feet and shake my hands, curling my fingers inside my gloves to warm them, with ever decreasing success, and with an ever increasing desire to get back inside as quickly as possible.

My Wisconsin friends are probably chuckling at this description. After all, 11 degrees below zero is only the beginning. I just saw that 17 below zero is in the forecast as the low for New Year's Eve. I still remember the feeling of bundling up and going for a run at 36 below zero during my years in college in Minnesota. And I know that, historically speaking, it can get even colder here in the Midwest. Then there is the wind that can accompany the cold up here on the ridge where our little Wisconsin farm is located. Eleven below zero on a still winter morning is one thing; eleven below zero with the wind blowing at your face at 30 miles per hour is an altogether different beast.

Whatever the low temperature, there is something to that instinctive feeling of danger that accompanies a downward trending mercury.  For humans, a healthy body temperature ranges between 97 and 99 degrees fahrenheit. For horses it's a little higher, at 99 to 101 degrees, and for goats it's even higher, at 102-103 degrees. It's remarkable how little ability we humans have to cope with extremely low temperatures. Right now we have the outdoor wood furnace going full blast, enabling us to keep even our drafty old farmhouse at a toasty 72 degrees. And that's certainly not a bad thing given that we have a three week old baby in the house.

It's equally remarkable, though, to observe the farm animals cope with the cold. Down in the barnyard, I find the pigs cuddled together every morning, having buried themselves in hay with only their snouts exposed. Seeing me, they shake the hay off slowly and reluctantly, only their stronger desire to eat able to overwhelm their desire for warmth. The goats, too, sleep in pairs or trios, sharing body heat and staying as still as possible through the long, cold nights. Even our two bucks who are pictured above, who usually spend their time fighting with each other, cuddle together out of the wind in their little shelter, sharing body heat, trying make it through one more night, trying to winter through to that renewed warmth that, instinctively, every creature knows will follow the cold as inevitably and as regularly as the earth circles the sun on its tilted axis.

For all these instinctive coping mechanisms, it's all remarkably fragile. Every morning the animals clamor for their doubled rations, and when they're not staying still in order to conserve warmth, they're busily eating hay in order to generate it. At 11 degrees below zero, I find myself breaking ice even on the electrified water buckets. The animals run over and drink thirstily, hydrating themselves before a sheet of ice forms yet again. The first very cold morning, I found myself with a frozen pipe in the milkhouse. Thankfully it hadn't yet burst, and a heater applied to it for a day followed by a better wrapping with insulation and a longer length of heat tape seems to have taken care of the problem. For all their instincts, the animals themselves also aren't always helpful. A few mornings ago, our bored horse decided to entertain himself by taking the heating element out of his water tank despite my having placed it under a large rock. Thankfully I rectified the situation before he had an entirely frozen tank of water, but I still have to find a better way to secure that heating element. Really, it's all so fragile, so tenuous. The water needs to be kept free from ice, the hay needs to be replenished, and the wind needs to be blocked. If any one of these things goes awry, or any one of countless other things, then warmth turns to cold, and life slowly ebbs away.

Later today, as the temperature creeps toward the zero degree mark, I need to head out to the barn once again. The goats are all bred for January kiddings, in order to provide goat meat for folks who want it for the Easter holiday. Although I've worked hard to get the barn finished, even adding a plastic strip door to block the wind, I still have to finish the individual kidding stalls to separate out the mothers and their new babies. So, pray for a mid-January warm-up and successful kiddings for us here at Kleinshire. The goats and all our other animals are amazing me with their remarkable adaptability, but the extreme cold of the last few days has also reminded me that it's all remarkably fragile.

Stay warm, everybody!