The daisy that I gave Maria – she threw it outside rather than put it in the garbage was radiant in the snow, it was bittersweet, a reminder of Spring to come, and of all that is coming tonight and in the weeks and months before that. The point of winter here, I think, is to make us appreciate Spring. Someone posted a message on Facebook saying they were in Arizona and it was 70 degrees. That did not make me want to live in Arizona, it made me think of how sweet it will be to plant a bigger Dahlia garden in the Spring, walk on Crystal Hill with the dogs and Maria.
By night, my daisy was succumbing to the blowing wind and snow, it is gone now, buried in a foot of snow. The Daisy said goodbye to me before she was overwhelmed, such a sweet and beautiful metaphor for life, for this awful night, for the meaning both of Winter and Spring. I’ll see you in the Spring, I said.
(We are feeding the animals in the shelter of the Pole Barn, the sheep and donkeys can get wild in close quarters, it can be dangerous, Simon kicked Ted the ram halfway across the barn when he tried to take some of his grain, Red’s job is to stay close and keep the sheep on their side until the grain is eaten. Not easy, he does it well.)
This kind of cold affects so many people, it is difficult to comprehend how much discomfort and suffering it brings to so many millions, many not as comfortable as Maria and I in our sturdy farmhouse. For people who live with animals, and who love them, there is a special kind of discomfort, for pets and especially for farm animals. We can keep our pets safe and warm, although many suffer too. Ours are warm and comfortable. The barn cats are inside, the dogs are curled up by the wood stove.
My friend Jane Dubert, who has communicated with me for years, lives on a small farm in Iowa and she wrote today that the cold over the past few weeks is difficult for her to bear. The forecast for tonight was 18 below, she wrote, the same as for Bedlam Farm. Next week, she said, there is a three day stretch forecast for lows of 10 to 25 below at night and highs of – 8 to – 5 during the day. She has started to get little goats, she wrote, the sheep have not yet started “and I keep telling them to cross their legs for awhile. Of all the things that I find depressing and difficult to deal with,” she wrote, “it is that biting cold where I really can not do anything to keep the animals warm.”
I was grateful for her message, I too wanted to reach out to somebody feeling this special concern on such a night.
What Jane said is so true for me. Animals are hardy, many have lived out in the cold for thousands of years, but when animals are in your care and the weather is as savage and unrelenting as it is tonight – bitter cold, piercing winds, driving snow – then the worst thing is that I really can do nothing to make the animals in my care comfortable. I cannot do much for the millions of people grappling with the cold – I will do what I can do – but my animals are just a few yards away and I feel so responsible for them. We have brought grain to them, extra fresh hay, piled old hay on the barn stall floor and in the Pole Barn. We opened up the cow stall just off the Pole Barn for the donkeys, we have plenty of fresh and heated water available to them.
But on this kind of a night, where it is almost unbearable even to step outside – it is -16 now with strong and gusting winds and snow – they are out on their own, we can keep them nourished and alive, but not warm and comfortable. That is the boundary between pets and animals, as Jane wrote, the particular pain of being responsible for animals. Red and I just went out to the barn, it was hard to walk or breathe out there, my fingers were throbbing before I got to the barn, I gave the animals treats and alfalfa, I believe in storms it is comforting for them to see me, they are unsettled and restless.
The snow is up to my knees in parts, the wind driving it into my face and eyes. Snow has blown in under the closed doors and windows, it does not melt, even after hours on the floor. The windows are rattling, the wind is blowing drifts across the yard and porch and pastures. Tomorrow we will have to rush outside in temperatures well below zero, doing chores for as long as we can bear it, then running inside to keep warm. Maria keeps trying to get me to stay inside and let her do the chores, I won’t do that, I am not nearly there yet, I will do my part and share this with her.
I was grateful to get back inside, I will be up through the night to check on the barns and make sure water is flowing through the cold pipes, whipped by the merciless wind against the back of the house. It is difficult for so many people, I think of them and wish comfort for them, but Jane spoke to my heart, the worst thing is that i cannot keep these animals warm.
Stay comfortable, Jane, you can only do the best that you can, the same as me. That is good enough. A life with animals of any kind, pets or farm animals, is a life of concern and responsibility, people like us are drawn to it like bees on honey. Weather like this is a gift, defining, part of what it means to be human to to risk love.
I almost didn’t bring out this morning, it was so cold, but it takes a strong human to deny a border collie work in the morning, Red’s assignment was to keep the sheep in the barn while we moved the hay feeders, I didn’t even want to think about what -8 degree ice and snow felt like when you lay down on your stomach, even a dog, but Red did not flinch, I kept thinking about what a dog like this must have meant to a farmer 100 years ago, I know what he means to me now.
We fed the animals their hay inside of the Pole Barn, it was snowing too hard and the wind was blowing too hard for them to get to the feeders we pulled the feeders inside the barn. Red is the only animal who seems completely unfazed or bothered by the wind or the bitter cold, his job was to keep the sheep away from the donkey feeder – Simon will kick the sheep if they get too close to his hay. The donkeys can go anywhere they want, the sheep have to stay by their feeder.
Red is an awesome worker, nothing gets in his way or distracts him, and I have come to count on him completely. I just say “keep the sheep there,” and I go about my business, I know they will stay there.
Maria can’t bear to throw living things in the garbage, she wants to return them to nature, she brought the daisies I got her outside and I saw this one in the snow, out in the very cruel cold – it was – 8 mid-morning here. Winter can be beautiful here, it can be harsh, I feel for the normally hardy sheep and donkeys in cold like this, there are few things we can do for them. They have shelter in the Pole Barn – the big arctic storm is due to hit hardest tonight but they are restless, anxious, hungry. We keep heated water buckets full, to warm their insides, I see it is hard for them to stand on the snow and ice.
My frost-bitten fingers protest when I go outside, they ache, only Red seems undeterred by the cold, hardly aware of it, we can only go out for a few minutes at a time, and it is expected to get savagely cold and windy tonight – 18, with a wind chill of -25. We are putting out extra hay, scattering old hay across the concrete floor of the stall and throughout the Pole Barn. We are graining the sheep and the donkeys twice a day, ferrying warm and fresh water to the chicken roost, it freezes within minutes. The wind is blowing fine snow through the back of the house, we don’t have storm windows yet and the two wood stoves are going round the clock. The big and cold and windy stuff is coming tonight, I suspect we will be up and down all night checking on the animals, the pipes. The windows are covered in frost, except near the wood stoves where the dogs are huddling, and the barn cats too.
We have to fill the water buckets in the bathtub and ferry them out to the pasture, the outdoor faucets are all frozen solid.
This morning, my car window shattered as I tried to open it to see out when I ran to the hardware store for birdseed – we are running out and this is no time to leave the birds without seed or suet. I imagine something froze inside. It was a hairy ride to a window repair shop, snow and ice blowing in, fortunately there is one down the road, I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere for a day or so. I hope they can fix it today. Dan, the Time Warner cable repair man came this morning, and helped get the TV cable working, we may need it over the next few days.
The cruel cold is different from ordinary cold, it alters matter.
This round is a long haul, it will be bitter cold for days. I wonder how to photograph bitter cold, which lens to use. My camera froze for the first time this morning, the shutter wouldn’t activate, that has never happened to me before. But first, I got this photo of Maria’s daisy, it seems so beautiful and evocative out in the cruel cold.
