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No snow yet here in the Metro, but it is colder than a cow's tit in January. The current temperature is 24 with a wind child index that makes it feel like 15. We are supposed to struggle into the mid 30's by afternoon.
Day before yesterday (Saturday), the temperature was in the 70's until about 6 p.m. when it plunged 40 degrees in less than 30 minutes. That's Oklahoma weather!! As people are fond of saying around here, "If you don't like the weather, just wait an hour! It'll change!"
We are embarking on the two dreariest months in Oklahoma--January and February. Traditionally, they are the coldest of the year. The temperature struggles to reach the freezing mark most days. Â
In addition, these months are the ugliest. Everything is completely dead; the grass crunches and breaks like icicles when one walks across it; Bennie (our dog) carries it into the house constantly on his fur; the trees stand like stark sentries against the bleak sky, their gnarled, naked branches snaking into the air, searching for the elusive warmth of the sun, now hiding far to the South.Â
I remember these days on the farm. Dad, Jim, and Larry would be up before dawn to milk the cows, their bags full of warm milk, even if their tits were stiff with the cold. My brothers would dress, then slip their coveralls on over their school clothes. No gloves, though, because it was too hard to squeeze the milk from the cows' udders wearing gloves.Â
Their hands stayed perpetually chapped, red, and raw from those brutal mornings. Dad would be out soon after with the ax to break the ice on the tank, so that the horses and cattle could drink; then, he would feed from the tall stacks of hay in the barn we had harvested from our alfalfa fields the previous summer.
Life was and is harsh on a farm or ranch in the winter. Ask Annie. She has been writing about many of these same things from her ranch in Oregon.