Saturday, January 15, 2011...Ten Below ZERO!!! Yikes......In The First Degree......

This morning when I arose at 6:30, the mercury had dipped to a tawdry -10°. It accounted for a deathly still winter air...crisp and burning to the nostrils of any living creature sucking it into their lungs. I cringed at the thought of trudging to the barns to thaw water bowls and rousing the sleeping animals from their warm nests, so I decided to waylay the deed until later than usual. I instead stoked the pellet stove and found that it needed cleaned to work more efficiently on this ungodly winter morning. I shut the pellet feeder off and allowed the stove to burn out while switching to the oil furnace...sending hot water to the baseboard units as backup, while I cleaned the pellet stove which is our first line of defense. Using the oil furnace is synonymous with pouring the oil out unto the ground, because of the nitwit installation methods of idiotic plumbers in this area of the north. When living here and doing heating and plumbing, you would think that efficiency would be of the utmost concern, due to the harsh cold winters, but that is usually is not the case.
This loon of a plumber simply ran a supply line from the furnace, out to the first baseboard unit, where it went in one end and out the other....going to the next, then the next and so on, until it returned to the furnace. The first wall unit got all the heat, sending the remainder on and on until the last unit got luke warm water. Anytime I installed hot water heat, I ran a supply line out and a cold return back, then tapped each wall unit into the respective lines. That gave each wall unit the very same heated water and returned the used water to the furnace for reheating. This spelled EFFICIENCY! For me to rectify the problem now...I would have to open walls and ceilings to access the copper lines to reroute, add or join them.....so we’re stuck with past stupidity and in-efficiency.
After a half hour, the pellet stove was cool enough to remove the soot and ash, cleaning the air inlet vessel to allow the flame to burn briskly, extracting all the BTU’s available from the pellets. I quickly cleaned everything and restarted the stove, returning it to it's normal heating condition...which allowed me to stop wasting oil...Black Gold...Texas tea....Middle East War Funds!!!!!

Last evening, I went to the barn to tuck all the animals in, feed and water them for the night. Before leaving, I sheared all the beautiful fur off of the lifeless body of our beloved BG (Bunny Girl). I know this seems like a terrible thing to some, but it is the only thing we have left of her to cherish, so Vick will process it into a soft warm yarn, with which she will knit a pretty hat to remember her by. It will be an item we will keep forever in lieu of having BG to enjoy. The life and thought of a farmer are somewhat different than a person who has a regular 9 to 5 job and lives a regular life. Farmers see life in a different perspective, which to some is viewed as a crude, hard, heartless way of life. It is not that farmers are calloused or uncaring; they just understand life and death on a different level, or from a different perspective. Creatures are born, they eat, they grow, they give birth, and they die. It is the circle of life which......pleasant or not......we are all a part of and living through. Farmers have learned to take their losses in stride, keep their sadness within and roll with the flow. We have no time for crying, because most of the time, the tears would seldom dry before the next ones flow. Sometimes the farm is such a place...with death possibly happening at the next turn or the dawning of the next day. You just never know what will happen next.
Why do we do it? Because the joy and pleasure of watching all the animals living their lives...happily...daily would not be witnessed if we didn't. The birth of baby ducks and chicks...bunnies or whatever, would never be seen, if we did not take the bad things along with the good. It’s a way of life...A hard cruel life by some people’s standards, but a good pleasant life by those of us willing to overlook those hard, sad, unpleasant times for the good. Vick is slowly reverting from a person that would dwell on the sadness of a loss, to one who readily accepts the loss and moves on to continue to give our animals a better life than they had before....And it continues daily....EVERY DAY.
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