I can’t wait for the #PolarVortex to be fully gone!

We’ve had either negative wind chills or negative temps every night since the 5th and we’ve been solidly under 25°F this entire time. Serious #DeepFreeze!

However, we’ve had perfectly wonderful weather in comparison with the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas! I’m not complaining, except that I just KNEW we had moved a little too far north! I knew it! Should have never ventured out of the South!

The neighbor’s stock pond is frozen solid, I swear. Speaking of frozen solid, okay, almost solid, the new horse tank heater worked, in a way. So, I give it a solid B+ for workability as long as the animal has a long neck or can reach the little pocket of water. It made a pretty cool iceberg down inside, but it did not freeze totally solid.

Frozen on the bottom and frozen on top, but with an open hole in the ice for seals, whales, and polar bears to be able to get up out of the water, erm…I mean, hole in the ice for the horse to drink out of!

Today I thought of the bees; I wonder if they made it? I checked them in January and they still had cake and seemed to be ever growing their stores, so I hope they’ve made it through. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had all died, too.

The horse, sheep, chickens, and Orange the barn cat (he sleeps in an open cat carrier in a heated bed with a horse blanket over the top) all stayed in the barn most of the time. When the temperature came up above 0°F, including the windchill, then I would open their doors and they could venture out into the snow and get snowblind. As soon as the sun started going down, I would close their doors again. Most of the time the sheep didn’t even want to go out!

Why would we want to go out there?! It’s too cold! Shut the door!

The inside of barn would stay between +4° to 12°F during the night while outside the wind chills bottomed out around -26°F. Our lowest overnight temperature was -18°F with no added windchill.