Cold

It keeps getting colder.  Last night it was minus 11 degrees.  Officially at the airport it was minus 18.

The warmest it got today was around 4 degrees above zero.  But we had sun!  It looked warmer than it was.  Temperatures like this makes me think I am back in North Dakota or Minnesota and not western Montana where it usually doesn't get this cold during Winter, or if it does, for not as long.

Right now - and the night is still young! - it is minus 11 degrees.  I believe the overnight low is predicted to be around minus 20.

I let the fire in the wood stove go out overnight.  This morning it was 48 degrees inside the house.  Tomorrow morning I wonder how cold it will be in the house?

The cattle are doing fine.  They have plenty of hay to eat and water to drink.  Yesterday I added a few more straw bales for the cattle to lay on in the loafing shed, and today I added one more bale.  I think the cattle eat half of the straw.

This afternoon, when not eating, a number of cattle laid in the loafing shed in the sun.  They chewed their cud and looked fine.  A few cattle standing around the hay feeders, relaxing and not eating, had a little bit of white frost in the fur around their mouths and noses from their breath.

Daisy hasn't been outside all day.  This evening when I went outside to check on the cattle's water Daisy was eager to join me.  She got halfway out the door when the cold hit her.  She quickly backed up and stayed in the house.  She appears to be satisfied to sit by the windows to look at the weather.  She often keeps an eye on me when I go outside.  Now if I could only teach her to dial 911 if I have an accident.

I am going through a lot of firewood to stay warm.

Even so cold, the sun shines warm enough mid afternoon to melt the snow crumbs from where I scraped snow off the roof.

A shoveled path to shorten the walk to the large hay bales.

Waiting for Summer

The past few days I have shoveled some snow off the hay bales.  This is what I have left to do tomorrow as my fingers were frozen by the time I reached this point.

Snow between more rows of bales.  The bale on the right is quack grass.  The cattle do eat it.  I put out one bale of regular grass and one bale of quack grass.  Now that the cattle ate the regular hay they are now working on the quack grass.