The Days When it Really Snowed
PART 1
Having grown up as a farm kid in Iowa I was no stranger to snow and ice. We knew to expect it, to prepare for it, how to survive during its presence, and how to work and play in it. In those days I don’t remember a year during January and February when the gravel roads and fields weren’t a perpetual blanket of snow. The roads were packed so hard from travel that it was more like ice than snow.
The temperatures usually hovered around 10 degrees, with even colder wind chills, so nothing ever melted until spring. Missing school because of snow was not as common there as it was in the big cities, or in the southern states. The slightest flurry in Kansas City, for example, and school is called off or let out early, because of the congested traffic and higher probability of accidents.
On those rare occasions in Iowa, however, when it was bad enough to call off school, this little farm kid would revel in the day. Other neighborhood farm kids would gather on the nearest big hill with our pieces of barn tin, or tractor tire innertubes, and pile on together and sail down the incline at speeds we were certain challenged the sound barrier.
I remember quite vividly a day when the neighborhood pack seemed particularly accident prone. A girl my age fell from her barn tin, and the metal sliced through her trousers and left a foot-long gash in her thigh. She ended up at the hospital emergency room getting stitches. That same day several of us guys piled on the innertube and had a little trouble getting stopped. We went over a drop-off, and fell about 12 feet into an icy creek bed.
Not a one of us came up unscathed, with either a bloody nose, cracked lip, a loose tooth or two, or all of the above. Funny thing is, we all came up laughing and went right back up the hill and did it again. Only the next time, of course, we made sure we bailed off before the drop-off.
We also skated on farm ponds—on ice two feet thick. We ice fished, in little huts that blocked out the frigid winds, or sometimes with no hut at all. And there were those snow drifts that were so tall we could climb up them to the roof of our barn, or build tunnels clear through them to the other side, thinking we had just made our own little ice world.
But the winter days weren’t always fun and games. I helped my dad with all the chores—feeding livestock, hauling hay, and cutting firewood. One thought nothing about the weather conditions when this work needed done. We dressed as warm as we could, toiled with frozen feet and numb fingers, and did the work.
A few years back, during a four-year residence in western Arkansas, I learned firsthand what winters without snow were like. As I recall, during the time I was there, it snowed once where there was any significant amount of accumulation. It was during the night, and by noon the next day it had all melted.
I never thought I’d say it, but I missed the snow. I knew how to drive in it, and survive in it, and winters didn’t seem right without it. And I couldn’t understand why a complete community would shut down because of a few inches of snow, when I came from a place where snow was measured in feet, and we functioned just fine.
I got my wish when I left Arkansas and became a freelance writer. Before I staked my claim in the Ozarks, I went back to my grandpa’s farm in northern Missouri and spent the winter in the old family farmhouse. My intent on going back to the farm was not necessarily permanent, but I didn’t rule it out either.
It was mostly what I called an extended vacation, to relive some of the moments I had as a kid and spend some time with my ailing grandpa. Being a freelance writer I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted.
Coincidentally that winter, our ranch manager had a hip injury so while he recovered someone else was needed to manage our cow herd. When my uncle relayed the message to me (I’m certain he knew how I would respond), my eyes undoubtedly lit up like halogen spotlights. Just like when I was a kid, I was getting up at the break of dawn and heading for the cow pasture.
To make the experience even more memorable, I had a little 10-week-old Australian Shepherd puppy named Cody, who was quite anxious to practice his cowdog instincts. I learned very quickly that the technique and equipment used in managing cattle had changed a bit.
I was a teenager when the big round hay bale came about, and the equipment that moved them then was a three-pronged spike on the back of a tractor. And our tractor didn’t have a cab, or a windbreak. Once the hay bale was set in the pasture, we placed a metal cage-like bale ring around it to keep the cattle from spreading the hay all over and laying in it. All they were supposed to do was eat it.
The philosophy nowadays, of some cattle farmers, is to unroll it, let the cattle eat what they want, then let them lay in the rest of it. Plus, having been spread out, the seed from the hay is returned to the pasture. I wasn’t about to argue for any technique, I just wanted to play cowboy.
To unroll the hay I used a hydraulic system on the back of a flatbed pickup. It’s a pretty nice system, and all managed from the heated cab of the pickup. I’d find a new spot every morning and unroll the bale for the bawling, hungry bovines.
The most interesting part of my return home that year was the snow. From November through March, our county had never, on record, received so much snow. From leaving a place where there was virtually none, and returning to a place where it was more than common, and had never seen more, took quite an adjustment.
But I never complained once. I said I missed the snow, and I meant it. Not once did I let it keep me from enjoying the extended vacation, and I welcomed the adventure of taking care of cattle as it accumulated.