We’ve been in the deep freeze since our first snow on Friday night, bottoming out at a wind chill of -7°F.

The chickens are so cold they haven’t come down out of their houses for more than a minute to stand in the snow and then go right back up inside. I’m not sure they’ve even eaten or drank any water in the last 48 hours. Fortunately, the freeze is supposed to break tomorrow.

This cold blast has definitely inspired the Canadian geese to get on the move. I counted six or seven skeins of geese flying overhead on my short walk between the house and the barn. The lakes and ponds have frozen over, and possibly even frozen solid to the north of here.

None of the sheep nor the horse seriously objected when I closed the barn doors again for one more night. Well, Orange the Cat didn’t really want to get locked back in, but I convinced him he had to. He is currently snowed in unless he digs his way out through his tunnel under the big sliding door. He was cold from running around in the snow earlier, so he wasn’t really motivated to dig his way out.

Same story, different year, here. Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to start tying up the loose ends, put the decorations away, and get this place cleaned up and organized again. There won’t be any lambs this year as we didn’t breed. Hence, I shouldn’t be distracted from planning out and preparing a new garden.