Tag: #weather

January

January

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…

Beauty of the New Fallen 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.

Plowing the Drive From the Barn to the House to the Road.

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.

Trying to Keep Both Pipes and Cats Protected.

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/

The Wind

The Wind

My weather apps warned me about the coming high wind – The wind that would blow for the next twenty hours. What it didn’t do was warn me about how that wind would affect me, how it would play with my mind, how it would invade my sleep and my dreams.

The first of three warnings came in the morning and called for sustained winds of 25-30 miles/hour with gusts up to 50 miles/hour. We had certainly seen much worse at the farm, and I wasn’t concerned.

The Wind Stayed with us for Over Twenty Hours

When the wind arrived in the late afternoon, it started slow enough and mild enough, but as daylight faded, it picked up speed and didn’t let up. It was constant and the sound, while not loud, seemingly surrounded the house, whirling, gusting and then returning to a constant blow. It stayed with us for the evening while we ate dinner and later when we were watching TV. A low and plaintive howl, it was the backdrop for the entire evening.

Eventually it was bedtime and I took Carmen outside one last time. Usually, she runs around, checks out the barn, does her last potty, and then ambles back to the house, in no hurry. This night? She took off like a bat out of hell running for the barn, barking with her big girl voice the whole way. She stood near the fence by the barn with her hackles up, barking madly into the dark and against the wind. I could hear our neighbors’ dogs barking in return from a quarter mile away. The wind had all of us on edge and a little uneasy I guess. Eventually I grabbed Carmen and we returned to the house.

My sleep, such as it was, was unsettled. We always keep at least one window open in our bedroom and that night as I lay in bed, I felt the wind mockingly caress my face, while infiltrating my mind. In the distance, I heard a tree crash to the ground. There were voices in the night air – groans, moans, creaks, cries and mutterings. Human or animal, real or imagined I cannot say. The hours passed with my mind in a fog between wakefulness and shallow sleep. Throughout, the wind was there with me. It inhabited my dreams, and made them restless. Not quite nightmares, they were nonetheless uneasy and agitated. I remembered them distinctly during the night, but by dawn they were gone, as if the wind itself blew them away.

It was a bad night’s sleep. When dawn was just breaking, I got up. Although I’d slept horribly, there was no reason to stay in bed. The wind was still blowing and I knew no better sleep was coming my way. Carmen and I fed the horses, then I fed Carmen. Finally, I turned on the coffee pot.

I sat at our kitchen island drinking my coffee. Looking out the window, I could see the wind rippling across the pond in the early light. I sighed, and knew It would continue to blow for several more hours. Taking another sip, I tried to clear the cobwebs that occupied my mind.