Its Really Cold Out There!!!

Its cold here in Northern Illinois today. We woke to a brisk 5 below with a chill factor of 22 below. Cold weather like this brings on new challenges on the farm. The biggest is how to keep water to the animals. We currently have only 3 heaters running, a small one in the chicken coop, and heated bucket for the goats, and a large heated trough for the horses. Since we put the horses away at night, we need to get water in buckets and put into their stalls. This of course will be frozen by morning. There could be heated buckets in the horse stalls, but one stall doesn't have electricity and basically I'm too cheap to run a heater on the other stall. We have found a good compromise is to bring the frozen buckets from the horse stalls in every morning as we put them into the pasture. This allows them to thaw to the point where we can dump them and fill them with clean water. They have plenty of opportunity to drink before the water freezes completely.

Family Photos Sorry but the family photos are currently off line due to a power supply failure on the photo server. We'll be back up soon.