New Year’s Day started with the alarm going off at 5 a.m., a full hour earlier than normal. The temperature was two below zero and the wind was howling. From the bathroom the wind sounded like the wind of movies, the kind where you know it means business.
Phil and I, dressed in many layers, left the house by 6 a.m., met two Mohawk Outing Club kids and the father of one, and drove to the DAR State Forest. The plan was to hike about 1 1/4 miles to the top of Moore’s Hill and its fire tower and watch the first light of the New Year rise above the horizon.
Several other students were to have joined us, but with a wind chill of 23 below, we were not surprised they had opted out. As we crunched along the forest road to the tower with our noses and eyes barely visible, I wondered why I was there instead of home in my warm bed with the two Border Collies and three cats. It was so cold that we had left the dog grrrls at home.
We made it to the tower in plenty of time. In fact we climbed up, and down and back up, mostly to keep circulation flowing, before the sun rose, right on schedule at 7:15 a.m. Phil took a few pictures and a short video that captured the rocking of the metal tower in the fierce wind.
Sun up, we quickly retraced our steps back to the cars. Instead of stopping with the others for coffee, Phil and I returned home to deal with a frozen drainpipe.
Our circa 1855 farmhouse not-so-cleverly has its plumbing on the north wall, from whence come the coldest winds in the winter. I had remembered to leave the door open under the kitchen sink, so the incoming water pipes were fine, but a forgotten slow drip from the faucet had caused the drain to freeze.
A frozen pipe can burst and cause a lot of problems, but a frozen drain is simply annoying. The drainpipe goes from the sink, through our unheated pantry and down through the floor. The pantry part has frozen in the past.
I removed all the little-used items from the far back bottom portion of the pantry and Phil first heated the pipe with an ancient hand-held hair dryer that once belonged to my grandmother. That didn’t work, so with fire extinguisher at the ready, he gave the pipe a blast with a propane torch. That didn’t work either.
Turns out the pipe had been frozen just at the wall between the sink and the pantry so it took some time to get it thawed.
By then it was almost 9 a.m. and I was later than usual getting out to the barn to feed the animals. Once there all seemed fine, though frigid, except that a six-year-old ewe named Lucy was slow to get up and refused to eat her morning hay ration. She also seemed unsteady on her feet. She had been totally fine 12 hours earlier.
The only thing that had changed in Lucy’s life was the temperature, which had fallen from the mid-20s the day before down to zero. I suspected some sort of digestive problem, Phil suggested hypothermia.
No matter what, we had to get her warm. I planned to put a sheep sweater on her and place hay bales around her and her pen mate, Phil thought she needed more than that so Lucy came into the laundry room.
The laundry room was once another kitchen in our previously two-family house. Since our cellar is small dirt-floored and very dark, we store everything a normal family might keep in the basement in the laundry room. So along with the washer, the freezer, the ironing pile, geraniums and other plants I winter over, pails of apples, our juice and soda collection, three bicycles, assorted climbing, biking and canoeing gear, and assorted thawing water pails from the barn, came Lucy.
By the time we had dragged in a hog panel (a section of portable metal fence) to block off the corner of the room, Lucy was not doing at all well. She drank some warm water but would not eat. Her temperature was a bit low. I gave her molasses in warm water and a dose of banamine from my collection of veterinary meds. I basically fussed over her all day.
Finally she started eating, first with no real interest, later with the gusto of a normal Shetland sheep. She is now fine and is spending the days in the barn, but has been coming inside when the temperature falls below 20 degrees.
At first we just could not explain why a healthy adult sheep would get hypothermic. A couple of days later it dawned on Phil that dehydration can lead to hypothermia. The sheep have all had access to water each day, but it’s been so cold that if they don’t drink within an hour of my bringing their pails, the water freezes solid. Perhaps Lucy didn’t drink when she had the opportunity.
So Jan. 1 was a long and eventful day, but not atypical of our lives here at Whitney Acres Farm, in fact I would say it was just about a normal day.
Happy New Year.