FREEZER BURN
By Jocelyn Hainsworth
There seems to be something going wrong with 2009. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s got a lot of people talking. Well, more like complaining.
Oh, let’s be honest - they’re downright snarly these days.
The details of their unhappiness are a little fuzzy to me. I don’t know what it is ... I hear them talking, and even through three wraps of my scarf I can detect the anger and bitterness in their voices, but the topic they are going on about seems to be just beyond my grasp.
Just yesterday, as I was walking down the street, I came across a small huddle of people deep in conversation. Snippets and sound bites of what they were saying carried through my ear muffs and I caught “... can’t believe this cold ...” and “... when will this ever end?” Then someone else said “... record breaking cold ...” and then a foreign word “... spring ...”
I stopped to ponder where I had heard this word before. It seemed familiar - I would have to look it up when I got home - but was reminded to keep moving when one of the group asked another to give her a bit of a push as she had frozen down to the sidewalk during their visit and couldn’t get going again without a little help.
It occurred to me that this word “spring” might be a significant clue as to what folks were so upset about - I mean, just judging by the way it seems to be in every sentence uttered these days. It might even be considered a fixation, the way they go on and on about it. I felt I should have strong feelings about it too, but was having trouble working out the details. Is it possible to get frostbite on the brain? Freezer burn on your grey matter? And, if you did, would it affect your powers of concentration? I’ve been kind of worried about my shrinking attention span lately.
They say that the best thing you can do to stimulate your brain is to keep it active, so when I got home I decided to look “spring” up in the dictionary. If you want to believe this craziness, Mr. Webster says that spring is a warm season that starts in March, and that it comes every single year. This has made me pretty darned skeptical about anything else he has printed in that book, I can tell you, but that’s what it said.
I thought I would dig a little deeper so I pulled out the old scribbler I keep a bit of a diary in and looked back to other March entries. This is where it got really confusing - I accept that Mr. Webster might make stuff up, but the diary is in my own writing. Why would I lie?
Be darned if I didn’t mention spring too. Over and over again. Like it wasn’t a fantasy, or even anything out of the ordinary. If I am to be believed, spring is when the birds come back from the south, the snow melts, and trees get leaves on them. Amazing.
Mind you, it’s not all sweetness and roses, apparently there is something in March called “mud” that I seem to despise. Really. There are quite a few references, and I don’t sound happy about mud in any of them.
I thought really hard. If only my thinking wasn’t so fuzzy! Mud ... mud ... darn it! I wasn’t going to dig out the dictionary for this one! Mud ... yucky ... mess ... everywhere ... boots ... floors ... mess ... walls ... clothes ... dogs ... wet ... give up ... put broom away, bring in shovel ... okay, okay, it all came back to me. I do hate mud. And, if Mr. Webster is right, we should be having some right now.
Having solved that one with the few warm brain cells that I have operating, my next plan is to research the symptoms and treatment of Frozen Brain Syndrom on the Internet. I don’t know if I’ll learn anything, but the heater out in the office can really kick out the BTUs. It might not be the real thing, but in 2009 it might be the only March warmth I get.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Sunday, March 08, 2009
SAUNA SUIT
It's been a lazy winter of it for me this year, and it's beginning to show around my waistline. There are a couple of contributing factors to this - besides the fact that I like food a little too much for my own good, that is.
For the past number of years I have had my own personal exercise routine. It's called feeding the steers their grain ration. Whether it's forty below in the winter, or forty above in the summer, we go out and fill up to thirty five gallon pails full of raw oats or ground grains (chop) and carry them all over to the feeder pen, then fight our way through big, pushy animals to dump the feed in the troughs. It strengthens back muscles, arm muscles, leg muscles, and it does a nice job of sucking in a flabby tummy too. I can never stick with a exercise workout that I have to set time aside for, but this is different - the animals have to be fed, it's useful work, and it has to be done.
Part of my trouble started last November when we shipped last years feeders. Down the road they went to market, and in came the 2008 calf crop. Only this time Glen decided he was going to try to finish these guys a little cheaper. Grain costs much more than hay, so he thought he'd just start them off on hay and baled green feed, and only use grain later on when they had already got some size to them. What this boiled down to was the end of my calorie-burning chores. Funny how, what with wearing bulky winter clothing, the creeping poundage didn't show itself immediately, but the photos we took in Cuba sure showed up where they settled!
The other major contributing factor in my weight gain is the economic down turn. No really! I know everyone wants to blame it for everything, but it really is affecting my activity levels on this farm! Any other winter I would have gone out after supper and helped Glen feed the bales because it was the only time we had to do it. We both worked all day long. But his job in the oil patch has pretty much come to a grinding halt, so he is home all day, and he gets to do the chores in the daylight. It's a much more civilized way of life, I'll grant you that, but it does nothing in the calorie burning department.
So it was with much relief that I was told he has started working a grain ration into the feeder's diet, and for the first time all winter I went out with him this morning to help him out and see which bins he was using. He's only up to twelve pails per day (for sixty head). Grain is too rich a diet for them to just have everything they can hold right off the bat. You can actually kill animals by giving them too much grain at once.
Being totally out of the loop as far as outdoor chores for the winter went, I dressed for January when I got ready to go out. There's no denying that it's still colder that it should be for March, but it's not THAT cold. Even carrying those few pails had me well warmed up in my old ski-doo suit, but we weren't done yet - next stop was a trip out to the dug out to chop a drinking hole in the ice.
For the past two winters Glen had let the cattle get their water from licking snow, but partly because he's decided that they do better on water, and partly because he's been home to do chores, this winter he has opened an ice hole almost every day. (On the days of forty below the cattle wouldn't leave their shelter for a drink anyway.) Because I had never seen this done and I was curious, I tagged along this morning to check it out. He has been asking me when I plan to take over this job for "my cattle", and I have informed him that April 1st is my day to start. (Surely the winter can't last THAT long!)
It was interesting to watch. He has a "trough" cut in the ice, about 8 inches wide and 2 feet long. The cattle have splashed enough water up and around it while drinking that it has built up a frozen lip of maybe 6 inches of ice framing the hole. Glen used his big ax to chop carefully around the inside of the hole, scooping out the ice chips after one circuit, and breaking through on the second one. He says that it's nothing to do these days with only 4 or 5 inches if ice - it was a half hour job in the dead of winter.
I just watched the action there, but when Glen got back on the tractor to go feed bales I said I'd walk the half mile home. It wasn't but a few hundred feet and I was peeling extra clothing off! There is no melting going on yet, but that March sun was strong on my back, the snow was deep, and I was wearing Glen's big boots. By the time I got back to the house I was wearing my own little personal sauna suit. Obviously I should take that trek on a regular basis.
For the past number of years I have had my own personal exercise routine. It's called feeding the steers their grain ration. Whether it's forty below in the winter, or forty above in the summer, we go out and fill up to thirty five gallon pails full of raw oats or ground grains (chop) and carry them all over to the feeder pen, then fight our way through big, pushy animals to dump the feed in the troughs. It strengthens back muscles, arm muscles, leg muscles, and it does a nice job of sucking in a flabby tummy too. I can never stick with a exercise workout that I have to set time aside for, but this is different - the animals have to be fed, it's useful work, and it has to be done.
Part of my trouble started last November when we shipped last years feeders. Down the road they went to market, and in came the 2008 calf crop. Only this time Glen decided he was going to try to finish these guys a little cheaper. Grain costs much more than hay, so he thought he'd just start them off on hay and baled green feed, and only use grain later on when they had already got some size to them. What this boiled down to was the end of my calorie-burning chores. Funny how, what with wearing bulky winter clothing, the creeping poundage didn't show itself immediately, but the photos we took in Cuba sure showed up where they settled!
The other major contributing factor in my weight gain is the economic down turn. No really! I know everyone wants to blame it for everything, but it really is affecting my activity levels on this farm! Any other winter I would have gone out after supper and helped Glen feed the bales because it was the only time we had to do it. We both worked all day long. But his job in the oil patch has pretty much come to a grinding halt, so he is home all day, and he gets to do the chores in the daylight. It's a much more civilized way of life, I'll grant you that, but it does nothing in the calorie burning department.
So it was with much relief that I was told he has started working a grain ration into the feeder's diet, and for the first time all winter I went out with him this morning to help him out and see which bins he was using. He's only up to twelve pails per day (for sixty head). Grain is too rich a diet for them to just have everything they can hold right off the bat. You can actually kill animals by giving them too much grain at once.
Being totally out of the loop as far as outdoor chores for the winter went, I dressed for January when I got ready to go out. There's no denying that it's still colder that it should be for March, but it's not THAT cold. Even carrying those few pails had me well warmed up in my old ski-doo suit, but we weren't done yet - next stop was a trip out to the dug out to chop a drinking hole in the ice.
For the past two winters Glen had let the cattle get their water from licking snow, but partly because he's decided that they do better on water, and partly because he's been home to do chores, this winter he has opened an ice hole almost every day. (On the days of forty below the cattle wouldn't leave their shelter for a drink anyway.) Because I had never seen this done and I was curious, I tagged along this morning to check it out. He has been asking me when I plan to take over this job for "my cattle", and I have informed him that April 1st is my day to start. (Surely the winter can't last THAT long!)
It was interesting to watch. He has a "trough" cut in the ice, about 8 inches wide and 2 feet long. The cattle have splashed enough water up and around it while drinking that it has built up a frozen lip of maybe 6 inches of ice framing the hole. Glen used his big ax to chop carefully around the inside of the hole, scooping out the ice chips after one circuit, and breaking through on the second one. He says that it's nothing to do these days with only 4 or 5 inches if ice - it was a half hour job in the dead of winter.
I just watched the action there, but when Glen got back on the tractor to go feed bales I said I'd walk the half mile home. It wasn't but a few hundred feet and I was peeling extra clothing off! There is no melting going on yet, but that March sun was strong on my back, the snow was deep, and I was wearing Glen's big boots. By the time I got back to the house I was wearing my own little personal sauna suit. Obviously I should take that trek on a regular basis.
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