The gravel crackled and the Buick rolled down and away from Brune Hill. Its lone occupant was leaving to spend a holiday week with relatives in another state. I’d be the lone Injun taking care of the dairy. There would be no time for Christmas with my own family and the little angel on my shoulder kept muttering to stop worrying about personal problems and look at the sky.
More and more the voice warned me of impending disasters, heartaches that could have been avoided, physical dangers, and calamities of manmade origin not my own.
Most essentially, the guardian angel kept repeating the clichés about good character. I was 26 years old and needed to hear these things.
The temperature dropped below freezing at 4:00 p.m. The pipes were wrapped and the afternoon chores were well underway. Six- ty-five Holsteins and several Jer seys wandered towards the barn as 5:00 p.m. neared. Milking took about an hour and a half, or, doing it alone took two hours. Scraping the lane, shoveling manure, and washing all the concrete took another 30 to 45 minutes. By the time the barn chores were finished, it was 8:00 p.m. The bottle calves needed feeding and I moved them from an open pen into the covered hay barn. The evening felt particularly cool. The last duty was hauling three-wire 140-pound alfalfa bales to the milk cows. The troughs were homemade and each held two bales.
One mistake was evident the next morning. The temperature settled to near 10 degrees and the lane coming into the milk barn was a sheet of ice. The Holsteins slipped, slid, and fell – walking up the steps into the barn. The angel’s voice chuckled, “Well, you don’t need to worry about washing the concrete until this cold spell is over.” The milking parlor was an ice house, but I managed to keep the wash lines running. Dairies in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and all points north are enclosed. Such is not the case in South Central Texas where the milkmaids and neighbor kids spend fun time spray washing each other while tending tasks in shorts and t-shirts.
Without scraping and washing the lane, the barn chores were done sooner. However today, all the water troughs needed breaking out. The bottle calves must be fed twice a day after each milking, as well as hauling more alfalfa to the milk cows’ dry lot – twice a day. I also ran a hose from the tank room to the water troughs that I could reach. All the day’s necessary duties took longer because I was alone and because the temperature continued to fall.
The second day of the deep freeze was much like the first, but it was evident that the water troughs would be a problem. There were three groups of different aged replacement heifers. The individu- al troughs would not suffice. So, on the third day, I hitched up the trailer and combined the young stuff in a trap at my house. For the first time in my life, I took an axe walked onto a frozen pond and chopped out a section approximately three feet wide and twenty feet long. The critters must have been starving of thirst. They trouped behind me and slurped the icy liquid the moment it was busted free.
The conversations between me and the angel were ongoing and hilarious. The cold didn’t bother me too bad. I had my hunting clothes from Montana. The wool pants, long handles, flannel shirt, vest, extra heavy coat, wool cap with ear flaps, wool gloves, and insulat ed snow boots – kept me from suffering too miserably. Nevertheless, please consider that I was 26 and the tougher the situation – the better I liked it! To that extent, I was lucky my guardian angel had good humor and was watchful. The daily functions had me getting to bed near midnight and arising again at 4:00 a.m.
The fourth day was Christmas Day. Upon entering the tank room, I was horrified to note that I'd for gotten to “turn on” the milk tank after cleaning it the prior evening. But – when I reached for the switch it was “on”. My brain was frazzled and it took me a minute to think, or, the angel told me it was an electrical problem. There was nothing for me to do but return to the house and call my electrician in La Grange. He immediately knew my problem and headed to my rescue.
Meanwhile, the dry cows came up for feeding and one that was close to calving was having trouble. In the dark, while I waited for an electrician, I tied the cow’s head to a post and pulled a 100-plus pound Holstein bull calf. Then I dried the rascal and carried it to the hay barn.
The electrician showed up and went to work on the compressor. “These things are only set to run down to six degrees,” he said. “It’s zero at my house this morning. But we’ll get this thing running in just a minute.” The rest of the day was much like the others, but it was impressive to note the amount of frozen manure piling up for the cows to have steady footing.
The fifth day had me wonder ing how long this cold spell could last. Even my angel was getting tired. Fortunately, that afternoon the weather broke. In retrospect, I’d never regret the dairy. It was a good plan based on a poor and unsustainable Jimmy Carter farm program. A sad truth is that other folks may never realize or recognize when such notions again arise in D.C.
But – I’d always remember the Big Freeze at Christmas in ’83.
