Aaargghh! This morning that's how my fingers felt after feeding, numbness mixed with stinging, and that was wearing gloves. My disenchantment with cold weather isn't strictly from being a southern boy though.
Many moons ago when I served as a paratrooper in the Army, we had a training exercise coming up in Hohensfels, Germany during the month of October. We were always given a packing list of what to take depending on the weather forecast. One item on the list was our winter sleeping bags, fart sacks to us airborne types, but those dudes were heavy and bulky, and anyway, I had a friend with a "better" idea.
William Hunt, or Willie Boy to us, found some supposedly wonder bags at a local dive near our post in Vicenza, Italy. Lightweight and compact, the proprietor swore they were good to 10 degrees plus or minus a few. (afterwards we were convinced he must have meant celsius not Fahrenheit) So there you have it, we geared up and flew to Germany, the only two dudes with any sense at all on that C-130.
We jumped in on a beautiful, warm October day, but by that evening things started to go south. First came the rain and with it the cold. The one question that slipped our minds when buying the wonder bags was were they waterproof. Well of course they weren't, and to really teach us a lesson old man winter started dropping snow on us as well. The wonder bags turned into sponges and not only were they useless at keeping you warm, they ended up weighing three times as much as the winter bag. It was the coldest, most miserable teeth rattling, shivering experience I've ever endured, and to this day the tips of my fingers and toes go numb and turn the color of a cadaver's skin when it gets cold. So there, that's the other reason I dislike the freezing weather.
Down at the farm things are chugging right along and unlike me, the porkers love them some chilly time. Look at the size of these whoppers: (that's Myfoot in the photo)
Something we're excited about is in a month or two we'll have some 100% pure heritage English Large Black pork available through the Oklahoma Food Coop and the Tulsa Clean Food Market. If you like succulent meat then you'll definitely have to try this out. Here's a shot of a few of them settling into winter quarters:
Thanks for reading, and thanks to all of you that support your local farmers!
Pork & Greens