Wouldn’t it be nice to have no more cold hands when working at the barn? Winter in New England is all about the cold. The forecast for the next few days is overnight lows in the single digits and daytime highs that are less than 20. About three years ago, the cold started to really bother my hands, to the point where when I fed the horses, sometimes I had to retreat to my car and hold them over the heating vents. You know how it is — you have to take your gloves off to do some intricate task and the next thing you know your fingertips are numb. So imagine my delight at finding ways to warm up my digits.
First I tried the hot pocket packages. The kind you rip open and put in your gloves. They are better than nothing, but do little for your fingertips (my fingertips get really cold, even in the house sometimes, which leads me to believe I have Raynaud’s syndrome).
In November, I bought myself battery charged handwarmers. Two of them. These are easy to hold and warm up quickly. Most of the time I only need to use them at the lowest setting and the charge lasts for multiple trips to the barn. Typically, I keep them in my pockets, so I can plunge my hand into their warmth. On really cold mornings, I slipped them inside my wool mittens. Unfortunately, mittens are not ideal for the barn because you need to keep taking them off.
But the best device by far for keeping my hands warm is the electric gloves my husband gave me for Christmas. These are amazing! The batteries stay charged for about eight hours and they are warm all the way to the tips of my fingers. I still need to take them off when mixing grain or stuffing Nibble Nets but they feel so fantastic when you pull them on. My fingers warm up in record time. No more cold hands. While the gloves are expensive, and I might not have bought them for myself, they were a fabulous gift and one that I’ve enjoyed almost every day.’
I do a lot of carriage-driving. Once it gets below 40 degrees, my fingers always get cold. I bought a pair of electric glove liners 3 winters ago. I wear these under my regular gloves. The liners were nearly $200 but they are worth every penny. It is important to get the ones whose heating coils go around the fingertips. The less expensive ones just heat the palms. For the past three years, my winter carriage-driving is restricted more by ice on the dirt roads than by frozen fingers. My liners are made by “Action-Heat” and luckily for short women like me, they come in size small.
Heated gloves seem self-indulgent until you start suffering from circulation issues. Then, they are worth every penny.
I, too, find that my hands get so cold I’m almost afraid to go out! Trying to change a bit on a bridle in the middle of winter is a challenge, and the worse part of it is when you literally peel back a fingernail when trying to get the cold, half frozen leather out of the buckle. In addition, having grown up in Michigan, my fingers were frost nipped when I was young, and now, it doesn’t even need to be below freezing for the tips to start aching. I’ll remember these gloves, thank you ma’am!