Today is to be the coldest day of the year so far.....holding at 4° above zero right now and predicted to only reach 6° above all day long. Tonight is to be a bitter -9°, with tomorrow morning’s excitement being the rising of the sun to gain a little warmth from its arrival. I hate temperatures such as these, because it is difficult to keep the animals happy and comfy. God forbid the poor animals in the wild, out away from a barn, which at least affords a wind break for the animals. It also provides shelter to protect the woodchips from rain and snow, giving the animals a fluffy soft and warm place to bed down. Still......I’d rather the winter happened with tepid temperatures around freezing...not below zero. We’ve learned to roll with the flow throughout winter, with snow removal and patience as we await the arrival of spring. We once loathed the winter weather...hating each snow fall, because we had to trudge through them while performing our daily work duties. Vick spent years battling the cold, ice and snow while driving all over Jersey’s snow covered streets and driveways, attending to patients needs in their homes. She lugged a full bag of medical supplies, notebooks and a laptop as she stomped, fell and slid into and out of people’s houses, providing their needed medical care.
I spent many long, freezing days on a factory roof, trying to get facility heating equipment to perform at their optimum efficiency, to provide a heated facility for the workers to labor in. Dragging test equipment, tools and parts to a snow covered roof in the middle of a flat valley, is akin to trudging across the arctic tundra during a blizzard. Nothing works properly in sub-zero, snowy conditions, including my fingers or my younger mechanics, wishing to be inside where it was much warmer......contrary to the belief of the others who were inside awaiting more heat provided by our efforts. When we retired, we decided not to stress over snow and its removal. As long as we could stay inside and keep warm...there would be better days coming. There wasn’t anything we had to do that couldn’t wait, beyond the animals being fed and watered....and here we are today...in that very position!
Perhaps today, after the animals are fed and watered, we will do nothing more than awaiting a milder temperature. Perhaps we will venture to the gift shop, light the propane heater and work in there until we decide we’ve done enough or run out of propane fuel. If Vick doesn’t care to even brave this weather to go out to the gift shop, I’ll work on creating my easel for doing my pastel paintings. I can do a pastel while Vick creates a new watercolor painting. Vick put together little containers full of ground rice, in which we will keep the pastels together by color range. The rice keeps them clean and prevents their colors from coating each other, turning them all the same grayish hue. I’m looking forward to doing a few paintings of some of the beautiful local scenery along the “Catskill Creek”. I look forward to painting “Ol’ Blue”, which consists of Black head, Thomas Cole, Acra point, brunt knob and Windham High Peak...all individual peaks, yet part of the Catskill mountain range, as we see it daily.
Again, we have plenty of winter days coming that will offer temperatures in the thirties or forties. Why should we suffer frozen fingers and toes in this bitter cold to finish the gift shop? Perhaps we can look at what we will do for wall covering, since our promised woodcutter stuck it to us by disappearing into thin air and not returning our calls. He promised to cut the wall boards for us, but then reneged on his promise. We are finally coming to grips with this since it has and does happen regularly up here........
036994© Cluckin' "A" Critter Farm, LLC
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