Colder, etc.

The temperature got colder the past few nights than what the weather forecasts predicted. This morning and the previous morning I woke up to -14 F. Normally I just use a light bulb to heat the pump house for my well and switch to adding a space heater when it is below zero. I now found that just using a light bulb works to -14 F - when there is no wind. Nothing froze, which is good. I read on the Many Glacier Winter blog they were not so lucky as they got caught with frozen water pipes.

With the cold weather came clear skies. It is nice to see blue sky and the mountains.

The past few days I have seen eight to ten Hungarian partridges out in the back yard. It is nice to see them as I have not seen them for a very long time. Unlike in the summer when the partridges waddle/run off when I come outside the house, in the winter snow they fly off suddenly in a flurry of noise.

Over at Bob and Jan's place they have almost a dozen pheasants wintering among their caragana and pine tree hedges. Several bands of coyotes were howling to one another late yesterday afternoon NW along the river and ridge. Still no sign of deer tracks.

This morning another weather change as it is snowing lightly. This is not so bad as we could use some fresh snow. The recent warmer weather half melted and iced up the snow. Not so good for cross country skiing.

Even though I do not need more firewood every few days I take a half hour or more and split some of my logs. They need to be split eventually; it gives me something to do outside; and I could use the exercise. As the ground is frozen I found that I do not need to place the logs on my splitting stump. Setting the logs on the ground works just fine. The ground is much harder than my splitting stump. For the times my splitting maul goes all the through the log I wonder if the hard ground will dull my maul?