Baby, it's cold outside

Today I made sure the wood stove was going.  The outside temperature slowly slid all day from 12 degrees to zero right now.  And that is not factoring in the wind chill.  The house temperature was in the low 50s when I got up but I had it up at high as 73 degrees this evening.  It is 67 now. I love my wood stove.

I did go outside for a little while to check on my gopher trap.  It was too cold even for the gopher as the trap was not filled with dirt today.  Yesterday I had to move the trap as the gopher filled the trap and the tunnel so solid I couldn't see where the tunnel used to be.  The ground was frozen so hard I had to find another spot to dig for the tunnel.

Today I brought a second trap. I bent the metal shovel blade trying to dig through the frozen ground.  Eventually I noticed a few dirt mounds under a nearby tree's rain shadow.  The ground wasn't nearly as frozen there and I was able to quickly find and dig a place to set the trap.

Hopefully I get this gopher sooner than later.

While out in the pasture, on nearby trees, I decided to cut off some low dead tree branches.  I got about a dozen cut before I called it a day.  Even wearing my new leather gloves my hands froze and I ran home to hold them near my wood stove to warm back up.  My wood stove is great at getting the chill out of one's bones.