I may not hate January, but I don’t exactly love it. After the fun and festivities of Thanksgiving, the Christmas holiday season, and New Year’s Eve, January arrives like a fat dose of reality, cold and hard. When I was at West Point, it was the start of what we called “Gloom Period”*.

The weather, reduced daylight, post-holiday debt, broken resolutions, and springtime nowhere in sight all combine, making January a demanding month. Additionally, living on a farm in the country makes January more “real”, or at least more of a challenge than living in the city or the ‘burbs. All of the daily chores go slower, or take longer to do. It’s just a fact of life here on the farm.

There are of course good things about January – a couple of holidays; the fresh start of a new year; skiing, sledding or skating if you are into those and nature collaborates; all of those wonderful soups, stews and casseroles we make and eat in winter; seeing a bright red cardinal framed against the white of the snow; sitting by a fire, while looking out a window at the beauty of the falling snow…

Looking out a window at the beauty of the falling snow… and knowing I had to get my butt out there ASAP and plow the drive from the barn to the house to the road. This year, after over 700 days of no measurable snow in the Virginia Piedmont, Mother Nature reminded us she is boss. This January, two storms gave us 10 inches of snow and I plowed after each of them. I also plowed an elderly neighbor’s driveway so she could get up and down the hill at her home.

After the snow, the temperature dropped into the low teens and single digits. This meant placing an extra space heater in the barn tack room to keep the pipes from freezing. We also moved the barn cats into the tack room at night to keep them from freezing. Extra hay was provided for the horses, as well as giving them a fresh bucket of unfrozen water just before bed each night.

The state and county plowed the roads and then plowed them again. With high winds, the dry snow drifted back over a couple of our country byways, making them nearly impassable. Additionally, a couple of friends ended up with frozen pipes. The pretty white snow wasn’t quite so pretty by then.

Of course I realize compared to friends and family in the midwest, this weather has practically been balmy and the snowfall not so bad. Maybe I’ve grown soft over the years away from home.

This being Virginia, you can count on frequent weather changes, which did happen last week. The snow, ice and freezing temperatures gave way to a day of misting rain and then temperatures first in the 60s, and then the mid 70s the next day. The snow disappeared and the ground turned to mud. This week as the month is ending, the temps are dropping again. So goes January in The Virginia Piedmont.

In the poem, The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot famously said “April is the cruelest month…”. I’m not smart enough to argue with ol’ T.S., so let’s just call January a challenging month and let it go at that. I don’t hate January, and I don’t hate winter. I enjoy our four seasons and have no plans for relocation to a warmer climate. Still, I’m ready for February’s arrival. Yes, it remains winter, but January will be over, and we’ll have Valentine’s Day on February 14th. The 14th is important for another reason as well. The National’s pitchers and catchers report that day, as sure a sign of spring’s approach as anything I know of, and certainly more reliable than a groundhog’s musings.

Enjoy the season as best you can, my friends.

Addendum:

• * If interested, here’s a blog I previously published about Gloom Period at West Point. “The United States Military Academy at West Point can be a beautiful place, just not in the middle of winter. We called the time from January through early March, Gloom Period. It was a combination of the blahs, a lack of color, a lack of light, and coldness. There was a pervasive grayness to life […] Continue here – https://mnhallblog.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/gloom-period/