Cold weather memories

This current cold snap got me thinking about growing up a kid on a small dairy farm in the 60's in central NY and having to spread manure in this weather. Only had 26 cows so only had to clean gutters once per day. When you went to spread you didn't want it all blow back to you so you had to drive into the wind. I can remember some brutal days doing that. Had to scrape off the beaters afterwards so they wouldn't freeze and kept the tractor inside the cow barn so we could get it started. Now I don't even want to walk to the barn in this stuff to take care of the hand full of animals I have.This kind of weather looses its appeal as you get older.

> This kind of weather loses its appeal as you
> get older.

I was born in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan but such weather never had any appeal for me. It now has even less with the hydrant in the old barn frozen up so that I have to haul a hose out of the basement to fill the stock tank from the hydrant in the new barn. I"ll fill the riser with Keto-Aide tomorrow but I don"t have a lot of hope.

And now the water lines to the kitchen have frozen up in the crawl space. I *do* *not* want to go in there.

I hear you on that one. When I was young the cold didn't phase me but now I get shivers just looking out the window.

(quoted from post at 19:25:56 01/07/14) This kind of weather looses its appeal as you get older.

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Yep! And this is from a 74 year old kid who don't much care for it either. lol

As a young sailor with my ship homeported at the Boston navy yard, after my first winter there, I dreaded my second that I knew I would have to go through before getting separated from active duty. A bit too much for this south Texas boy, who had up till then never seen or experienced a real snow drift. Those government issue silk lined peacoats were a joke in that kind of weather. The foul weather deck jackets kept you warm and comfy, but you couldn't wear those on liberty.

Patrick
'49M

My thermometer read 5 this morning . . . and that is in Atlanta. Some of the temps I see up north are just scary.

A doctor friend (originally from the U.P. in Michigan) said he determined during the winter months (after being hit many times on the head when dispersing rotten/frozen potatoes by manure spreader) that he was NOT going to make a career living on a farm.

Growing up on a livestock farm made cold weather a real misery. Dad and I would spend all day getting water lines and waterers thawed out, and hay and feed to the livestock.

The winter my daughter was born I was at Iowa State living in married student housing. It got down to 20-some below zero and stayed there about ten days. When it finally got up to zero it felt like spring and the first guy that got his car started got his jumper cables out and we all helped each other get to the grocery store and laundromat.

as for rotting taters and there disposal i would say i am and expert on that , but that job was always done in the spring time after they had time to ferment a bit .The only farm chore worse is Chicken litter . When you mentioned rotten taters my stomach did flip flops . At my uncles place each spring there was a mountain of them to be disposed of. Nothing in this world like that taking a track loader and digging into that pile and dumping into old rear cut off dump truck frame and body then hauling them out and dumping them in the ravine WAY OUT BACK.Ya tried to work with the wind to your back.

Yea, as a kid I never could figure out why we carried so many tater's to the basement in the fall. Then carry the rotten ones back out in the spring and then all the dried up ones out in late summer. I thought it would have been easier to just not carry so many down to start with. As I have gotten older I understand now.

-50 in 1964, dad was in hospital for a operation and I was looking after the cows. Had to bring the 15 hp gasoline engine into the house to get to warm enough to start so I could make chop. shortly after that we moved to the west coast of canada. dont miss that type of cold

>>The winter my daughter was born I was at Iowa State living in married student housing. It got down to 20-some below zero and stayed there about ten days.

Was that by any chance in December of 1974? I was at Iowa State then and I lived in the Towers dorms, about a mile away from my closest class. That was a darn cold walk. I'll never forget how many days in a row it stayed so brutally cold.

I remember chipping all the ice out of the livestock water troughs, and hauling water from the only faucet that wasn't froze inside the barn in milk cans. Any water inadvertently spilled on the tailgate would freeze the milk cans to it in very short order. A very long day !! I don't miss that at all !!

I see a lot of the same things I remember as a kid growing up on a farm in NE Iowa. Dad milked dairy cows until I was 13 and of course had to haul manure every day, but 5 days a week I was in school for that. However, I remember well climbing up in the silo and throwing down silage, and doing a lot of the things on weekends and holidays. Milking itself was pretty warm because of the cows body heat and heated milk house. Then we fed out 300-400 hogs, and grinding feed, etc. was cold. After that, beef stock cows were still better than milking.
Also remember at times we had to wait for the ground to freeze solid enough to pick corn, and some of the coldest times were greasing the picker on a -10 or -20 morning. Had a JD 60 with a 227 picker and when you started picking, from some directions it wasn't too bad because the mounted picker would funnel the engine heat back over you and the husking beds would shield you from the sides.

We watered the cattle out of farm ponds. Carried an axe in the feed wagon to chop holes in the ice.

Gene

Feel your pain Patrick, served in the Nav for 6 years, and peacoats flat sucked for warmth. Last year I was in, was stationed on a tin can out of Norfolk, and while it usually never got very cold, that destroyer felt like an icebox most of the time in the winter.

The worst duty was going through boot at Great Lakes in November and December. Back then, it was not considered torture to mash ricky recruit on the parade ground in 0 weather.

On another note, after I got discharged, I came home to Indiana in a severe recession (1981). Given a choice between starvation and going back into the Navy, I chose hunger. Got a job in a stone mill (unheated, two walls and a roof) at 3.15 an hour. Also rented a 2-room house with a path outside town on a small farm. I remember trying to heat that little house with a wash stove (dumb idea), and like to froze to death that first winter. Got real tired of frozen coffee in the the pot. The 3 years I lived at the Little House were the coldest I have ever experienced. The interesting thing, is that it did something to me. Ever since that time, the cold just doesn't seem to bother me like it did when I was a kid. To this day, I haven't owned a coat, and only wear a jacket on the coldest days. Wife says sleeping with me is like having the furnace in bed. Maybe my metabolism went into high gear and got stuck.