Oh the weather outside is ... not surprising ...

When I was growing up I swore I’d never have a job that depended on the weather. Since we lived on the farm, my dad’s job wasn’t just somewhere he went every day – it was a part of our lives. So when the wheat blew down, or we had a drought, or it rained when they were cutting hay, we all knew about it. As a result, I didn’t want any part of that. (I didn’t want to own a business that depended on attracting customers, either. Can you guess how many options that leaves you with? Few!)

When it’s cold, things just don’t go as smoothly. We got five inches of snow, a fierce wind, and a high of 13 degrees today, not counting the wind chill. So what went wrong?

The tube cooler line froze. When you milk the cows, the milk goes first into the tube cooler - a pre-cooler for milk before it goes into the bulk tank. (That’s where the milk is stored before the milk truck comes to pick it up, once a day for us.) When they were thawing it, part of it broke, so they had to replace it.

A block heater - which keeps engines warm - wasn’t working on one of the tractors. We’ll have to get a new one. Almost all of the tractors needed jumpstarting.

Just regular winter weather, regular freezing problems … at least we didn’t have to convince any customers to come here!