Sliding into an Amish existence
Feb 23, 2009 10:21 AM, By Jeff Ryan
Do
you know what keeps winter interesting up here by the North Pole? Is it the
brisk air? The fluffy snow? The short days? More of that snow — this time, the
heavy, wet stuff? The layers upon layers of fashionable clothing? The spectacle
of frost-laden trees in the morning? More of that #@$%^&* snow, because
it's been, like, 36 hours since it last snowed?
No, those things keep winter merely a mild diversion from the end of one
hay-making season to the beginning of another. What keeps winter interesting is
ice. Lots of ice. We've had an unbelievably interesting winter this year. We've
had plain ice as a solo act. We've had ice as the opening act for multiple
inches of snow. We've had ice that just couldn't muster the courage to make the
jump to sleet or even slush, and stayed as a lovely coating on all surfaces
rather than melt away.
So what's it mean? It means you move differently. Traction is a distant memory.
If, say, for instance, from a purely hypothetical standpoint, you sell hay, you
end up hiring other people with trucks to deliver it for you. A 4% upward slope
at an intersection suddenly looks like something Franz Klammer would relish . .
. coming from the other direction. Trying to go UP that slope is a different
story entirely. It instantly takes me back to the week before my departure to
California last February when I almost made it up a hill with a load of round
bales. The key word there being “almost.”
Without knowing any of the engineers at Hershey's who came up with the recipe
for Magic Shell, I am quite confident at least one of them was raised on a
ruminant farm in the upper Midwest where round bales were fed. Something about
the plastic mesh wrap around round bales seems to form a hard candy shell of
ice over the bale that rivals the strength of any space-age polymer Max Raphael
could tell you about on Modern Marvels. While insurance industry Yuppies
in Des Moines are working out at any one of three fitness centers on each
block, I'm doing some intense cardio work trying to get the net wrap off
several bales of cornstalks each day.
The only way to improve that workout would be to add some ice as a platform on
which to perform my daily routine.
Welcome to January 2009.
While my Embryo Transfer (ET) crew was busy running cows through the chute, I
was busy feeding the rest of the herd. Having the ET cows in the working area
made it much easier to feed them a round bale. Normally, at least one of them
tries to escape while I open the gate to enter the pen with a bale on my skid
loader before I can climb out and shut the gate again. (Back in the old days, I
had an assistant to watch the gates while I drove in with the goods. Guy No. 1
will help me with chores as soon as cattle are raised in offices, but not a
moment before.)
I began my descent down the concrete ramp into that part of the feedlot and was
reminded of my engineering roommates in college right away. They always talked
about the coefficient of drag, and resistance, and friction, and all kinds of
stuff like that on days when the grounds crew at ISU went out with what they
called power brooms to clear the sidewalks. We called them ice polishers.
It didn't feel like I was driving a skid loader so much as a Zamboni. A Zamboni
where the steering mechanism wasn't really hooked up to anything. I slid
sideways, then corrected and began to slide in the opposite direction. I
lowered my cargo and allowed the bale to touch the ground to give me a little
bit of an anchor. It worked quite well. It also saved me a bit of time on net
wrap removal.
Then I moved over to the pen where I would feed the bale. Again, there was
less-than-perfect traction. I weaved between a couple of gates and felt like I
had gotten by pretty easy with my ramp maneuver. My bale had taken on a
slightly different, definitely non-auction-topping appearance. I raised it up
slightly to make sure the whole thing made it to the pen.
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