Instead we got snow, then 20 degrees overnight, and then persistent winds reaching into the mid 30 mph range.  Sunday’s snow started out wet, accumulating on the polywire fences causing them to droop to the ground.  By mid-morning things turned drier and blustery, causing the chickens to huddle in place on the leeward side of their feeder and a few protective hay bales.  Not much foraging going on there…  It looks like it is high time to move the chickens into their winter hoophouses.  If the December weather improves I can always let them back out, but for now I’ll need to bring them in.

The first dose of winter weather always serves to point out the areas where I’ve procrastinated.  I scrambled to drop off some extra farrowing huts to the sows in the lower pasture because I didn’t want them to have their piglets in the snow.  Also on the to-do is finishing the bale grazing cross fencing, insulating the pond siphon plumbing, getting the heat trace working on the walk-in freezer’s condensate drain, and insulating the whey tank valves.  And of course there are the nagging tasks that encompass picking up all the half-finished summer construction projects, hoses, polywire reels, step-in posts, t posts, corral fences, frisbees, bicycles, broken chicken feeders, tarps, and all the other detritus that accumulated during the summer so I can make the farm safe for snow plowing.