The Long Winter
You may recognize the title of this blog as also being the title of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book where Laura describes a winter from her childhood that lasted seven months. This was the winter of 1880-1881 when the Dakota Territory, where the book takes place, was very sparsely settled. The book tells of the hardships of living on the prairie during seven months of blizzards and cold with scant provisions. Yeah, those people were tough!!!
We have all heard the stories about the Blizzard of '88 (that's 1888), when many people on the Plains perished due to being caught in a sudden 3-day blizzard. And my folks tell stories from the Blizzards of '49 (that's 1949), which they lived through. How planes dropped provisions to snow-bound residents and how the "weasels" had to come out and open the roads. The '49 blizzards were a series of blizzards that hit every few days for several weeks, totally paralyzing this area.
Fast forward to the current winter that we are enduring...and what am I whining about? It's been cold since late December until a couple weeks ago, so that was like two months of pretty consistent and intense cold. Not so much snow, just enough to make lots of ice on the rare day that any of it melted. So I whine and gripe and complain because I want 70 degree sunshine all winter? I've lived here all my 65 years so I should know that's unrealistic!
And I complain like it's the worst winter I ever saw, but that is so not true. I remember as a kid, before they cancelled school due to a forecast of snow, when we missed one entire week of school due to a week of blizzards. Of course, I didn't consider that a hardship, I loved it! It was probably my mother who wished the weather would clear up so she could send us kids off to school.
However, I have a story about the worst winter I ever endured, the winter of 1983-84. I need to remind myself of that winter every time I am tempted to complain about winter weather and realize that this isn't that bad.
It was a bad winter for this area, lots of snow and wind and cold, and everyone was pretty sick of winter by the time it was finally over, but we had our own private hell going on at the same time which made it very hard to endure!
Winter set in about the time of my birthday in November, and I'm pretty sure the last of that first snow finally melted in April! It had snowed fairly consistently all through November and into December. We were milking cows and struggling through the snow all that time, and since we had kids in school, also struggled with the 18 mile trip to and from school over snowy roads. We had also just recently leased about 30 head of milk cows and expanded our herd. Then in mid-December it got worse!
Snow was still falling and the wind was blowing so we were drifted in much of the time. We finally got the kids out to school and sent a bag with them so they could stay in town for that last week of school before Christmas vacation. It was our intention to get them on that last day and bring them home. Mother Nature had other plans!
Our world became a routine of milking cows, dealing with frosted udders and the ensuing mastitis, trying to keep baby calves from freezing to death, thawing out waterers or just giving up and carrying water to the cows and calves, and then going to the house where the water and drains had frozen. It was hard to pull yourself out of bed in the morning knowing what you were going to face, but we certainly dropped easily at night.
On the day were were planning to go to town to get the girls and share Christmas with our families (I think it was December 23rd) before coming home to spend the holiday snowed in at home, we headed to the milk barn early. Michael, who was still a preschooler was nestled in safe and warm with Grandma Blanche while Mike and I did the milking and chores. Being snuggled down in the barn I didn't realize that the weather had turned brutal while I wasn't looking.
As I left the barn to go to the house and get ready to finally see civilization again, I realized we probably weren't going anywhere, and that the kids wouldn't be coming home. I cried! When I picked up Michael from Grandma she said my dad had been frantically calling to let us know not to come because we wouldn't be able to make it. She assured him we were still around the place somewhere since she still had Michael. And Dad was right, there was no way to go anywhere. The wind was blowing about 60 miles an hour, and the temps had dropped to 20 below. The radio said the windchill factor was somewhere around 100 degrees below zero! And it was once again snowing!
We were living in a trailer house, which is never the warmest of quarters, and our two wood stoves, stoked to the max, kept our house about 60 degrees. It was so cold that my bottle of dish soap sitting on the counter next to the kitchen window froze! That night as we crawled into bed we put Michael in bed between us because we were afraid he would die of hypothermia if he slept alone!
The next few days were the biggest nightmare I have ever experienced! It was all I had described before times 100. The calf that had been born that miserable night and that Mike had bedded down in the hay next to his mother froze to death...along with the cow's swollen udder! Milking was lasting at least an hour longer than usual, and since the roads were closed and the tank was full, it was all for no profit because we could only run it down the drain!
Christmas day came and went with very little celebration except that Mike's Grandma Blanche, bless her beautiful heart, thawed and cooked a turkey with the trimmings so that we could have a mini-celebration with the four of us. Otherwise, it was just another miserable day of cold and work!
That particular storm finally ended and the county was finally able to get the road opened a few days after Christmas. Well, not the road exactly because the drifts on the road were higher than the snow plow, but they were able to blaze a trail across pasture and get the milk truck in. At that time my dad was the county commissioner and was supervising the plow. He just happened to have the girls with him. (I think he might have been as ready as anyone for them to go home since they were spending most of the time with them!) It was so good to have them home, and they were glad to be home until they found out how much work they were going to have to help us with.
While that might have been the worst of the winter, it continued until late March or early April that year with continual snow and cold. And then there were the sloppy roads and the sloppy (or whatever word is worse than sloppy) corrals. The mastitis from frosted udders continued until summer. The waterers that froze didn't thaw until warm weather, like sometime in April, and then we had leaks from split lines. Financially it was a disaster! There were problems that didn't show up for months, like cows that were in such poor condition that they wouldn't breed back.
We have seen some cold winter since then, and we have experienced winters with lots of snow. And in Nebraska the wind always blows! But since that time I don't remember a winter where it all came together in the "perfect storm" to create such a mess. And, of course, due to the nature of a dairy farm, these issues were more problematic for us than for many others.
So this morning, the sun is shining across my back as I am writing this and we are looking forward to a very nice late winter Saturday. The misery of this past winter is in the back of my mind and I am looking forward to spending some time outside today. So, for today, I will quit complaining about this seemingly long winter and look forward to spring!
I hope you have a lovely Saturday in the warm sunshine!
We have all heard the stories about the Blizzard of '88 (that's 1888), when many people on the Plains perished due to being caught in a sudden 3-day blizzard. And my folks tell stories from the Blizzards of '49 (that's 1949), which they lived through. How planes dropped provisions to snow-bound residents and how the "weasels" had to come out and open the roads. The '49 blizzards were a series of blizzards that hit every few days for several weeks, totally paralyzing this area.
Fast forward to the current winter that we are enduring...and what am I whining about? It's been cold since late December until a couple weeks ago, so that was like two months of pretty consistent and intense cold. Not so much snow, just enough to make lots of ice on the rare day that any of it melted. So I whine and gripe and complain because I want 70 degree sunshine all winter? I've lived here all my 65 years so I should know that's unrealistic!
And I complain like it's the worst winter I ever saw, but that is so not true. I remember as a kid, before they cancelled school due to a forecast of snow, when we missed one entire week of school due to a week of blizzards. Of course, I didn't consider that a hardship, I loved it! It was probably my mother who wished the weather would clear up so she could send us kids off to school.
However, I have a story about the worst winter I ever endured, the winter of 1983-84. I need to remind myself of that winter every time I am tempted to complain about winter weather and realize that this isn't that bad.
It was a bad winter for this area, lots of snow and wind and cold, and everyone was pretty sick of winter by the time it was finally over, but we had our own private hell going on at the same time which made it very hard to endure!
Winter set in about the time of my birthday in November, and I'm pretty sure the last of that first snow finally melted in April! It had snowed fairly consistently all through November and into December. We were milking cows and struggling through the snow all that time, and since we had kids in school, also struggled with the 18 mile trip to and from school over snowy roads. We had also just recently leased about 30 head of milk cows and expanded our herd. Then in mid-December it got worse!
Snow was still falling and the wind was blowing so we were drifted in much of the time. We finally got the kids out to school and sent a bag with them so they could stay in town for that last week of school before Christmas vacation. It was our intention to get them on that last day and bring them home. Mother Nature had other plans!
Our world became a routine of milking cows, dealing with frosted udders and the ensuing mastitis, trying to keep baby calves from freezing to death, thawing out waterers or just giving up and carrying water to the cows and calves, and then going to the house where the water and drains had frozen. It was hard to pull yourself out of bed in the morning knowing what you were going to face, but we certainly dropped easily at night.
On the day were were planning to go to town to get the girls and share Christmas with our families (I think it was December 23rd) before coming home to spend the holiday snowed in at home, we headed to the milk barn early. Michael, who was still a preschooler was nestled in safe and warm with Grandma Blanche while Mike and I did the milking and chores. Being snuggled down in the barn I didn't realize that the weather had turned brutal while I wasn't looking.
As I left the barn to go to the house and get ready to finally see civilization again, I realized we probably weren't going anywhere, and that the kids wouldn't be coming home. I cried! When I picked up Michael from Grandma she said my dad had been frantically calling to let us know not to come because we wouldn't be able to make it. She assured him we were still around the place somewhere since she still had Michael. And Dad was right, there was no way to go anywhere. The wind was blowing about 60 miles an hour, and the temps had dropped to 20 below. The radio said the windchill factor was somewhere around 100 degrees below zero! And it was once again snowing!
We were living in a trailer house, which is never the warmest of quarters, and our two wood stoves, stoked to the max, kept our house about 60 degrees. It was so cold that my bottle of dish soap sitting on the counter next to the kitchen window froze! That night as we crawled into bed we put Michael in bed between us because we were afraid he would die of hypothermia if he slept alone!
The next few days were the biggest nightmare I have ever experienced! It was all I had described before times 100. The calf that had been born that miserable night and that Mike had bedded down in the hay next to his mother froze to death...along with the cow's swollen udder! Milking was lasting at least an hour longer than usual, and since the roads were closed and the tank was full, it was all for no profit because we could only run it down the drain!
Christmas day came and went with very little celebration except that Mike's Grandma Blanche, bless her beautiful heart, thawed and cooked a turkey with the trimmings so that we could have a mini-celebration with the four of us. Otherwise, it was just another miserable day of cold and work!
That particular storm finally ended and the county was finally able to get the road opened a few days after Christmas. Well, not the road exactly because the drifts on the road were higher than the snow plow, but they were able to blaze a trail across pasture and get the milk truck in. At that time my dad was the county commissioner and was supervising the plow. He just happened to have the girls with him. (I think he might have been as ready as anyone for them to go home since they were spending most of the time with them!) It was so good to have them home, and they were glad to be home until they found out how much work they were going to have to help us with.
While that might have been the worst of the winter, it continued until late March or early April that year with continual snow and cold. And then there were the sloppy roads and the sloppy (or whatever word is worse than sloppy) corrals. The mastitis from frosted udders continued until summer. The waterers that froze didn't thaw until warm weather, like sometime in April, and then we had leaks from split lines. Financially it was a disaster! There were problems that didn't show up for months, like cows that were in such poor condition that they wouldn't breed back.
We have seen some cold winter since then, and we have experienced winters with lots of snow. And in Nebraska the wind always blows! But since that time I don't remember a winter where it all came together in the "perfect storm" to create such a mess. And, of course, due to the nature of a dairy farm, these issues were more problematic for us than for many others.
So this morning, the sun is shining across my back as I am writing this and we are looking forward to a very nice late winter Saturday. The misery of this past winter is in the back of my mind and I am looking forward to spending some time outside today. So, for today, I will quit complaining about this seemingly long winter and look forward to spring!
I hope you have a lovely Saturday in the warm sunshine!
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