This isn’t a world record, but we dropped below -20 degrees this weekend.  That’s the coldest temperature we’ve seen in the five winters we’ve been here.  If nothing else, the cold sure has a way of expediting trips to the outhouse.

The cattle, pigs, and chickens take it all in stride.  We’re the ones who do most of the griping.

The condensation from the piglets’ breath caused fantastic ice patterns to form on the cobwebs in their hut.

The cold weather makes handling the pigs’ whey difficult.  No matter how well insulated, we spend a lot of time defrosting pipes on our storage tanks, on our whey trailer, and at the cheese shop.  And then there’s the added hassle of PVC pipes shattering unexpectedly as they become brittle with cold.

Extreme cold temperatures make fencing the cattle more difficult too.  One of the fence posts was knocked over and the cattle got into a set of hay bales we were saving for spring.  When I went to replace the post on Sunday morning, the temperature had warmed up to -13, but it was still too cold to stab the post back into the ground, so I had to drill out a pilot hole with a carbide tipped hammer drill bit.  Everything takes three times as long on the cold days.