Winter hands

The thing about living on a farm is there is a lot of dirt. The thing about a lot of dirt is you wash your hands a lot. The thing about washing your hands a lot in winter is that they are always cold and rarely fully dry. This leads to little shallow cracks on the sides of my forefingers and thumbs which occasionally deepen so that they bleed and hurt. These cracks also get filled with the previously mentioned dirt and sometimes blue food dye so they show up more easily.

I have asked around and the only way to get rid of these little cracks is heaps of moisturizer so I sit at night rubbing huge quantities into my hands, waiting for it to soak in, then rubbing more in. This helps prevent the deeper, painful cracks but I still have not yet gotten rid of the shallow, dirty ones.