It’s been cold. Frigid. Eyelash, booger-freezing cold. Wind chills of -20 to -30 below at our farm. Maybe if you live in the Midwest this is normal. Maybe if you sit in a house after dark and before daybreak, it’s not a big deal. It’s just winter after all.

But here in the Mid-Atlantic, negative temperatures are not normal. And when you add a farm to your routine, to which has been one of the coldest winters on record, it can be tiring and painful. Every morning and night the steers need their food and water. I want them to do it themselves – it would be awesome if they could just take care of themselves! But I suppose if they had their way, like in the book Click Clack Moo by Doreen Cronin, when the cows start typing out ultimatums on a typewriter, Pepper and Oscar would desire electric blankets, the cat, pigeons, and mice, something warm as well.  Twice a day we bring Oscar hot water in a container to replace the frozen clump in his bucket. He doesn’t even wait for it to drain before he’s sticking his head in the hole to suck it dry. Pepper stands on a tiny patch of snowless land to get his fill of sun when it comes out. His water stays warm thanks to a great heater. But the method to get his water depends on the temperature. Right now the pump is frozen and we resort to filling buckets in the spring.

The chickens are getting through. Duke, our silkie rooster, lost his comb to frostbite – it was there one day and gone the next. He’s in the garage in a dog kennel because Henry (the possessed being) does not permit him to stay in the coop after sunrise, hence the probability that this exile caused the death of his comb. The other 12 are in the coop surrounded by hay bales, eating oatmeal in the morning and drinking warm water. I just put down another layer of wood chips because they are walking on frozen poop and it’s too cold to do a thorough cleaning. They have made it outside a total of three hours in the last 6 days. I am thinking they may soon go on strike if temperatures stay the same.

The seven chicks continue to do well in their tropical paradise under the heat lamp. They have no clue what is going on outside of their bucket. Their worries tend to revolve around giant hands reaching in to scoop them up.
No matter how you look at it, winter begins to wear on people. But for many farmers, it is a resting period (whatever). Because in less than a month the growing season will begin and adding to the list of animals chores will be planting, mowing, bailing, weeding, fencing, building…