Baby, It's Cold Outside

You know you're getting used to the temperature staying below freezing if you think that 34 is a tropical heat wave. For the past week, we've been living and working in a Popsicle of a weather pattern. Something about extreme cold just wears you out, and when the wind gusts and swirls around, not much can protect you from its bite.

The best you can do is hunker down and minimize your time spent exposed to the elements. Unless of course you're out doing Christmas trees. ;) I just finished an entire laundry load of thermals and wool socks that we had used over the weekend. When Mom was out running errands, she found some really nice knit wool gloves with a fleece lining. Those were finger-savers. Those and my Bofur hat. Everyone's ears were freezing, but mine were toasty warm. :P

Ice from a bucket that was left outside. Before it was broken, it could have served as a bowl.

At least we can escape the cold by coming in the house and warming by the fire, the animals are out there with not much else besides what God gave them. Before the really cold weather sank in, we did our gosh-darn-bestest attempt to set the farm menagerie up for the weather. Our attempts were not in vain; they seem to have fared well (for the most past, mini chickens seem to have been the exception). We made sure that there was deep bedding, lots of hot water to prevent the buckets from freezing, and heat lamps (very well secured heat lamps, I might add). 

The geese's bucket and the frozen splashes against the back wall

One can't be too cautious when using heat lamps though... You need to be freakishly OCD when it comes to heat lamp safety. Our neighbors just down the road lost their entire barn last week because a heat lamp fell into the bedding. You could see that giant black smoke cloud rising for miles around. Driving past that old barn, all that's left is charred metal sheets left from the siding.


Now, I know that everyone from the NE corner and Midwest is probably rolling their eyes at me right now. Cold this deep is normal for them. It's something that you acclimate to and learn to live with (or you just do as the birds do and fly South). In our lovely, temperate, mild Pacific Northwest, we don't know what to do with ourselves when it gets cold. Give us drippy sogginess any day, and we'll handle it without an umbrella, but throw us into Canada's weather systems, and you just might give us enough reason to hibernate for the rest of the winter.

I think that the garden is done until spring

Stay warm and stay safe everyone!