We had a fabulous autumn weather-wise, nothing to complain about although that didn’t prevent many of us from doing so. First it was too warm and too dry; then, when it started to rain, it was too cold and too wet. There’s no pleasing some people.

In our neck of the woods, every snow-free day in November is a bonus. We were in the fourth week of the month before we saw our first flakes and they only amounted to an annoying dusting. This was a generous bonus indeed.

If you live in my area long enough, you’re going to experience a winter that comes early and stays late. So late that you begin to think that we’ve entered a new Ice Age.

We were afflicted by just such a winter the year that I was eighteen and bulletproof.

I had taken a job working for a dairyman who lived about 20 miles from Sioux Falls. My job description included doing anything and everything on his dairy farm, from feeding calves to milking cows to scooping poop. I was essentially taking the place of the owner’s son, who had abruptly left the farm with his new bride following a domestic dispute with his paterfamilias.

Their 72-cow dairy barn was spanking new. For me, it was like stepping into a cushy new Cadillac when compared to the old and primitive dairy facilities we had at home.

A fierce blizzard blew in on Nov. 9. The storm swept across the Great Lakes the next day, sinking the ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald. Gordon Lightfoot later recorded a funeral dirge about the loss of the ship and its crew.

The boss — he went by Bud — had hired a builder from southern climes to construct his dairy barn. The morning after our first blizzard, we discovered a major design flaw in the barn’s ventilation system. Specifically, it let snow blow in through the eves, filling the entire north row of free stalls with white stuff.

I was young and bulletproof, so I had no problem with shoveling several metric tons of snow from the free stalls. But the frosty surprises didn’t end there.

We were milking the next day when a ceiling panel came crashing down along with a large quantity of snow. The same ventilation mistake made in the free stall portion of the barn had filled the milking parlor’s attic with snow.

I was bulletproof and easily able to crawl through the attic and push snow through the opening in the ceiling. I nailed plywood over the offending eaves, stopping any further snow incursions. But the problems didn’t end there.

The builder had placed the milk room’s water pipes inside the walls where — surprise! — they froze solid when the mercury plummeted below zero. We had no choice but to replumb the entire milk room, putting the pipes on the warm side of the wall. I was young and eager to learn how to solder copper pipes, so I saw this as a win.

Blizzards arrived on a regular basis that year, making it seem as though winter would never end. The snow got so deep on the south side of the new barn that Bud’s 3-year-old granddaughter and I were able to go sledding off the barn’s roof.

One day, in the aftermath of yet another blizzard, the milk truck got mired in a snowdrift about a quarter of a mile from the farm. I could see the driver shoveling furiously as he struggled to free the truck, so I picked up a scoop and walked out to help. The wind chill was deeply below zero, but I was young and bulletproof.

It took a great deal of shoveling, but we finally freed the truck, saving Bud from the distress of dumping milk. I wore ill-fitting wire rimmed glasses at the time and later examination revealed a white stripe of frostbite where the metal nose piece had rested on exposed skin. Maybe I wasn’t so bulletproof after all.

One day I was hauling a heavy bucket of silage with the skid loader when one of its wheels suddenly parted company. For some reason, all of the wheel’s studs had sheared off.

I was soon holding a long punch against the busted studs as Bud angrily whacked the punch with a humongous sledgehammer. This made me nervous; I may have been bulletproof, but my hands weren’t sledgehammer-proof.

On overcast nights the lights of Sioux Falls caused the low clouds to glow like neon. It made me wonder if something better was over the horizon.

There was. I quit that job and soon thereafter the winter that seemed as though it would never end finally did.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com