Brrrrrrrr.......

    This cold front is a killer! PTL, it's only lasted a few days and is supposed to be well on it's way out of MT by this evening. Sorry to those to the East of us, it coming your way :o(
    I was up every three hours, or so stoking the wood stove and still our inside temps dropped below 55F, so our natural gas furnace ran off and on this morning, until we got up 5:30 am and stoked it again before heading out for morning feeding.  The outside thermometer said -22 and with a wind of at least 25-30 mph, so..... Mike figures it's probably close to -40F to -50F with added windchill.  All I know is that with long johns, sweats, heavy socks, my heavy chore coat, scarf, good snow boots, good gloves and my Elmer Fudd hat, I was a Popsicle when we came back into the house( 10-15 minutes)  The water troughs were frozen solid and that is the first time this entire winter that has happened.
     I sure hope this isn't a sign, that if Phil( the groundhog) sees his shadow today, that we're in for 6 more weeks of this sub zero junk!  Here we are making plans for getting our seeds started by mid month, have our CSA garden flyer's all done up, just need to make enough copies and post in and around our County and working on getting the beds in the greenhouse all ready to go, so we can get that early start!
     Those of you in the mid section of the U.S. we feel your pain, you it seems are getting a taste of what our typical winters are like. Actually I shouldn't be complaining about a few days of sub zero cold, we've had an overall mild winter. I think that's what makes it tough, it was well into the high 30'sF and 40'sF the whole month of January, even a few mid 50'sF, then the sub zero temps. slam us for a few days, then nice again. It's been a real roller coaster ride and while I've enjoyed the milder temps the up and down is hard on everyone, especially the animals.
      Cortney was scheduled to work but her boss called last evening and asked if we could come on Thursday instead. I wasn't thinking and said that's fine, well........ Cortney is working at the sheep ranch. All that she needed to do was make his lunch and finish laundry and mopping, so I told her I'd fill in for her. So today I will need to get my ducks in a row.  We'll be baking bread, cleaning the rest of the house( a deep down cleaning). We were going to do this yesterday, but Mike ended up off work due to the bitter cold so we worked on other projects and played a few games( we were making up for him not being home this last weekend) :o)

Blessings for your day!