Well, brrr. It is somewhere in the icy realm of 25 below, with wind chills somewhere yet further than that. I’m thankful for our furnace, and my heated blanket, for a handful of black-and-white border collies who like to share body heat.
And we say, “Yeah, it’s cold enough.”
“Cold enough,” for the record, involves what I call work pajamas, so named when my husband noticed my clothes didn’t change a whole lot from in bed to out of bed. I informed him that I have my sleeping sweats and my working sweats. Because nice thick sweats are way more comfortable underneath insulated bibs than are stiff, cold jeans.
“Cold enough” is lingering a little longer over that cup of coffee, and it taking 45 minutes to muster the courage to bundle up, watching the thermometer creep upwards to a hopeful 4 below. Suddenly the house desperately needs tidying, and the spice cabinet needs organized.
“Cold enough” is when it takes 15 minutes to layer up — long johns and vest and bibs and sweater and coat and scarf and ski mask and hat and hood and gloves — only to realize you drank too much coffee and have to strip back down.
“Cold enough,” is when the smallest wind burns and bites any exposed skin, and your toes are cold before even leaving the house. Maybe you strip back down when you realize you forgot your second pair of socks. It is stomping the fire out of your feet after chores, and feeling the life come back with a vengeance.
“Cold enough” is a welcome mug of something hot, wrapped tight in chilled hands.
It’s when all the chicken eggs crack, one by one, when they hit the even colder air of outside the coop. It’s when eyebrows freeze and ice covers eyelashes from frozen breath. It’s when the front of my coat is frozen with droplets of milk after milking, from the spray of the milk zinging into the bucket. It’s a wonder Posey isn’t giving ice cream.
Yeah, it’s cold enough.
It’s breaking ice multiple times in a day, and my husband taking an axe with him anywhere he goes. It’s stomping blocks of ice out of the water pans, and feeding extra to everything to fuel their little furnaces.
It’s vehicles choking to life and clouds of exhaust in the frigid air, and clouds of breath from every nose and mouth.
It’s the dogs sticking inquisitive noses out the door and promptly changing their minds, or running through the snow packing a paw, ice caked between their toes. You thought you wanted a walk? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Yeah, it’s cold enough.
And rather understating the case, I’d say.
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Originally printed in the January/February 2024 edition of Down Country Roads Magazine
Winter. It really sets in after the Christmas season has drifted past, after the festivities have waned away. Usually, January is when the temperatures permanently settle into their winterish lows, and we forget the autumn and forget the spring and all that’s left is winter.
The short days seem shorter still. The skies, heavy with snow or icy blue, outline the skeletons of trees in the shelterbelts, and the sentinel ponderosas standing resolute on the ridgelines of the forest.
Snow crunches underfoot, and there is no give in the ground. Dams freeze, stock tanks freeze. All is rock hard. Dead sprigs are all that remain of summer gardens, with the plants sleeping snugly out of sight, unconcerned for what’s above.
And everything is cold.
The cows are cold, standing with their backs to the wind. The horses are cold, following suit, while the chickens sulk with abandon, staring at their food and refusing to leave the coop. Even the dogs, usually so eager to escape in the morning, hesitate when the world outside is cloaked in white. We don layer upon layer to armor up against the winter, dreaming of when we can walk about without coveralls and long underwear and sweatshirts over sweatshirts impeding every action. Out we tumble in the morning, with only our eyes visible, maybe our noses, stumbling down to the barn and the chicken coop and the tractor and the corrals, fumbling with mittened, cold-bitten fingers while our toes freeze in our boots.
And it is about halfway through January’s bleakness that I start remembering why springtime is such a welcome relief, and why people dislike the winter.
And so winter goes. The festivity of Christmastime gone, the excitement of the New Year behind us, the winter drags by, sleepy, depressed, and frostbitten.
But there is another side of winter, if we can see past the thermometer and the frozen fingers.
Under the biting cold is an energy. In between snowstorms. In between days of gale-force winds. A slumbering energy, ready to burst out in joyful excitement. There is an invigorating beauty, if one knows where to look. If one chooses to look.
It’s in the horses running fresh and free in a falling snow. It’s in the dogs dashing through drift after deep, new drift, gleeful against the cold. It’s in the whirling snowflakes of a snowglobe snowfall, and the silence of a winter night under a starry sky.
How do we miss those things?
It’s the acrobatics of chickadees at the birdfeeder.
It’s the first set of footprints in a fresh snow. Or the tiniest of tiny tracks between clumps of grass, evidence of the littlest of lives at work.
The hilarious energy of the pups when they’ve been inside too long, minutes before they are kicked out again.
It’s the fire in the fingers as they warm around a mug of coffee. It’s the frosty windowpanes, those amazingly intricate flowers that only grow in winter. It’s in the crystal-clear sound of a morning glazed over. It’s in the blue-sky, springlike days that punctuate our South Dakota winters. It’s in the clouds of warm breath from every nostril, and frost-covered backs of our black angus cows, when the wind isn’t blowing and their natural furnaces have made them comfortable.
It’s the glittering brilliance of fresh snow under a cold, waking sunrise, or under a full moon.
It’s the blue hues in the white landscape, the purples and pinks that are in every drift, every shadow, the subtle glaze of color that is anything but stark white. It is the strange and exquisite shapes chiseled into the snow, and the beautiful music of a melt-off.
Deep in winter, it is that kind of energy, that kind of excitement. Deep in winter, those glimpses of beauty so profound, against which spring in all its glory pales.
After all, winter doesn’t last forever.
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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on January 3, 2024
And just like that, we are standing on the threshold of a new year.
For better or for worse, last year is gone, done, nothing to be added or subtracted, and a brand-new year is just beginning. For some, it is exciting to look ahead to the future, gleaming with possibilities, while for others it feels like more of the same, and maybe is discouraging to look ahead and see nothing changing. It is bittersweet to see the last year pass away, with all of the joys and sorrows, successes and failures, regret at what we didn’t accomplish and gladness at what we did. It is easy to fall to the negative in all those things, seeing the struggles much more clearly than we see the joys. It is easier somehow to remember everything that went wrong, and to forget all the things that went right. But here we are, standing on the threshold and peering ahead into an unsullied year. And many of us, maybe most of us, catch at least a little of a sense of excitement.
Seasonally, it is a refreshing time. A dusting of snow underfoot, brisk breezes to nip the face, glorious watercolor sunsets we only ever enjoy in the dead of winter, and trees reaching up their bare branches into the pale skies. By South Dakota standards, we are halfway through our winter season, and spring is on the horizon, or just over it. The days are getting longer again, releasing us little by little from the long, dark evenings. Seed catalogs, colorful reminders of the joy and work of summer, have been perused, and in no time the seed starting will begin in earnest. Chick orders are being placed, and heifers are looking heavy, starting to waddle in their pregnant-ness, and could calve in as little as six or eight weeks for us, imminently for others. The lull in the ranching calendar is truly short lived, and a lot of folks are gearing up for the impending rush that will launch us into a new cycle of work on the ranch.
I admit, I love the start of a new year. I love the process and the discipline of reflecting back on the last year, seeing the ways in which God provided, the joys that He brought, the ways I have changed and grown, skills I have learned, people I have met, opportunities that were presented. And there is a sense of relief in being able to identify things that I truly wish to change, and to look ahead with hope and optimism and with trust that God isn’t done working on me. We get so caught up in our routines and habits, it can be hard to think outside the box we have built for ourselves, to shake some cobwebs off our thinking and our dreams and get to work doing something better, something new.
The New Year provides just that opportunity, and the freshness of the year gives permission.
Some people scoff at the idea of setting New Year’s resolutions, probably because so often those resolutions fail within a week or three of the New Year. Some people see failed resolutions as training in failure, but I think that’s just an excuse, and I think there is benefit even in an uncompleted or imperfectly kept resolution.
I think a lot of resolutions fail because they are poorly thought out, poorly conceived of. Maybe they are arbitrary, just another thing to add to the to-do list, without any real reason behind it. Maybe they are overly specific, so that they are almost impossible to keep, or under specific, so we can easily talk ourselves out of them. I think a lot of resolutions fail because they aren’t really honest about what our struggles are, what our habits are, and we don’t solicit help from our family and friends, and we don’t invite accountability. I think resolutions fail mostly, though, because we are complacent in our comfortable habits.
Personally, I like to think of goals, rather than resolutions. I find the exercise to be a beautiful reminder that life is a process. We don’t get to skip the work and reap the benefits. Without being intentional in our personal, spiritual, physical, and relational development, growth will be inconsistent at best. Growth takes work, it takes sacrifice, and sometimes it takes some backsliding and incomplete successes and downright failures. And that’s okay.
Sometimes the very act of setting a goal in our sights is enough to at least keep us pointed in the right direction. We might get off, we might fail, but we can reorient towards that goal and get back on track. It is hard to make changes without specifics, without something concrete to be working towards.
So, I love to use this season as a time to write my lists and set my goals, and I take the time to evaluate, dream, and ask questions. What would a richer faith look like? What would greater trust in God look like? What would time better spent look like? What benefits would that reap? What would a sweeter marriage look like? How can I grow in love and forbearance and patience? What is something I want to learn? Something I want to do better? A way I want to grow?
New Year’s resolutions and goals don’t have to be complicated. Honestly, it is probably better that they aren’t. But having a vision and goals can help to infuse hope and optimism into the New Year, and help us to begin well.
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My poor husband. I have a thing for baskets. And I love hunting for them at thrift stores, and finding beautiful and useful ones for egg gathering and bread serving and any other thing. He’s a little stymied by the basket thing. That, and the throw pillow thing. Oh, well. He doesn’t need to understand, it’s fine.
I found this pretty little one at a thrift store in town yesterday, and it is the perfect addition to my collection of egg baskets!
The chickens are finishing up a rough molt, but their egg production is holding pretty steady, and finally their beautiful plumage is growing back in! They looked so rough for a few months there, it finally they’re getting well-feathered and glossy again. Faithful little birds.
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Maybe two of the simplest foods. Eggs and yogurt. And it is amazing what we’ve grown accustomed to from the grocery store, and how incredibly delicious they are when homegrown.
One of the things I love about having chickens (and now a milk cow!) is being able to provide friends and family with fresh (fresh fresh!) eggs and milk. But of course I also love to be able to enjoy them at home, too!
I made yogurt for the first time with Posey’s milk, and tasted it this morning. Goodness gracious. There’s a night and day difference between store bought yogurt and homemade yogurt with store bought milk, but there’s an even bigger night and day difference when you use fresh, raw milk! Sweet, creamy, without any of the bitterness of store bought. You don’t even need to add anything to it, it is so good!
Simple pleasures.
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In a culture that wants fast and easy, cheap and replaceable, instant gratification and consumerism, convenience and mass-produced, it makes no sense to walk away to something totally different. It makes no sense to do for oneself. To take the long way around. To do it the slow way. To accept and embrace inconveniences.
If you had told me how satisfying it would be to eat eggs from my chickens, milk and cream and butter from my own milk cow, our own meat and vegetables and fresh baked bread, I would have believed you, but I wouldn’t have understood. Five years ago and ten years ago, my heart wanted that. But I had no idea.
No idea how satisfying it would be. How inconvenient and simple and hard and beautiful and growing it would be. How frustrating and elevating. It has moments of romance and sheer hilarity and humbling. And I wouldn’t want to change a thing.
Push back against a consumer mentality and become a producer. In small ways. Learn to make bread. Cook from scratch. Grow a few veggies on your deck. Keep an herb garden. Learn a few skills to do things yourself. Dust off your sewing machine. It doesn’t have to be complicated and baby steps are beautiful.
Because there is nothing like serving a home cooked meal, picking veggies from the garden, or pulling a loaf of fresh baked bread from the oven, or handing a neighbor a dozen fresh eggs, or a gallon of fresh milk. There’s nothing like knowing you made that. A factory in China didn’t make that. A computer didn’t execute that. You did that. You did the cultivating and the picking and the mixing and kneading and milking and stitching.
So go make something.
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