i spent a couple of years as a milker on small-scale industrial dairy farms. milking on a modern dairy is all about rhythm, the kind of rhythm that's all about muscle memory and the kind of subconscious hyper-focus that you see on films of ladies picking bad coffee beans off a constantly moving conveyor belt. … Continue reading kinesis
Category: prose
wind
on a gentle western slope near the summit at a reasonably high altitude, wind is a near constant on the farm. i count days before i can safely burn brush. i curse it in winter when it brings below-freezing temperatures down to subzero windchills. i goad it in spring when i need it to blow … Continue reading wind
longest
february, the shortest month, is the longest of all months in the northern calendar. day after bone-achingly cold day, grinding you down, making you question the existence of anything good besides sleep, february is kind of the worst. this year, february was... not cold. it was not 28 subzero days, each one a million years … Continue reading longest
fear
after our two weeks of bitter, arctic cold, we had two days of thaw. it was 50ºF (10ºC) and rainy, which brought down the snow pack a lot and left hard, treacherous ice behind. i ran the hose twice: once at the start of the thaw and once at the end of it. three more … Continue reading fear
howl
i was woken in the middle of the night last night by what was probably three or four coyotes, but sounded like a truckload of bathtub duckies being squeezed in a car compactor right outside my bedroom window. they yipped and howled and squeaked and barked until they got the minpin going, then faded away. … Continue reading howl
negative
it's -7ºF (-21.6ºC) right now with howling winds. the windchill at the closest NWS weather station is -25ºF (-31.6ºC). i'd like to think this will be the coldest night of the year, but the low forecast for tomorrow night is -23ºF (-30.5ºC) with windchill values as low as -41º (that's the same in both fahrenheit … Continue reading negative
crash
i finally dug up the nerve to go out into the ice last night. the rain had stopped and there was just a sifting of snow dancing in the air. the sky was indigo with pale smears of clouds and a handful of stars peering through. just a rabbit's breath of a breeze had come … Continue reading crash
wx
the weather has been eventful this week. we've had subzero windchills, above-freezing temperatures, a snowstorm on a day it was too cold to snow, a rainstorm on a day it was too cold to rain, and i'm looking out the window now on thickening fog at 28ºF. it has been drizzling all day and everything's … Continue reading wx
zero
after our long autumn, winter has finally set about us with its icy knives. even with daytime temperatures in the teens and twenties (fahrenheit), a breath of wind will tug the "feels like" temperature down below zero. the arctic air along with the foot of snow that we got early last week encourages indoor living, … Continue reading zero
stones
my neighbor recently paid someone to come in and cut down some venerable sugar maples and pull up a short stretch of century-old stone wall that ran along her property between her lawn and the road. there's a bleak scar now where the wall used to be and no sign of why someone would do … Continue reading stones
the gumboot gumshoe 