Brass monkey just lost 'em

According to our porch thermometer, it's 25 degrees Fahrenheit below zero out there right now at 4.10 am. That seems correct, too, not a broken thermometer because Bangor Airport, 350 feet lower in altitude, has 22 below.

About minus 33 degrees Celsius here, minus 30 in Bangor.

If our brass monkey was equipped, they just cracked off.

All through the woods, trees are popping and even exploding. The pops are sort of friendly-sounding, not too scary, but one big explosive crack sent Haggis the dog running for his mum this morning during our regular constitutional.

One of our older hens foolishly began to molt a couple weeks ago, and we'll see later if she made it through the night. The ducks and sheep will be fine; although the ewes are beginning to be uncomfortably pregnant, they're not due for several more weeks, thank heavens. Keeping newborn lambs alive when the weather is this cold can be very hard. They are born wet from amniotic fluid, which prevents their coats from working, and have to dry off before they can regulate their heat. They can go into hypothermia so every easily and just sort of drift off mildly, if you don't get them in the house and under the wood stove.

Poor little buggers. There's probably green fields in Yorkshire or Wales right now, places where lambs belong. (Although I hear it's been cold in Britain too.).

We won't see green until late April.

The oil furnace thermometer base temperature was reset a little higher last night to keep the frost off the two water pipes that run very close to the sill under the east side of the kitchen. There's a hot air duct in that space, just a four-inch one, but it does the job if you let the furnace do its job by keeping the thermostat at a sensible setting. Keep it set too low and the wood stoves will do the job instead. They don't have ducts pointing at the pipes. I also have a four-inch duct pointed right at my hot water heater and all the rest of the pipes. And my basement is sealed tight.

The one pipe I can't reach is the main supply pipe from the well. Maybe it's time to run the tap a little. It wouldn't hurt to do that for the sake of the well pump too.

The pressure tank and well pump are in a concrete space in the garage, heated with a 60 watt rough-duty incandescent bulb. I just re-covered that whole space with a new hinged, insulated lid and frame.

We ought to get through this with pipes intact. We'd better. Once they freeze, they'll stay that way for the winter unless we dig them up.

I expect some of our friends and neighbors will see their pipes freeze tonight.

The other thing that doesn't like to work in this kind of cold is a car battery. The electrochemical reaction that causes the power to flow slows right down in the cold. We keep 12 V battery packs for starting recalcitrant cars. And then engines themselves. Oil is the consistency of slow honey or even jelly, and despite what the manufacturers say about not needing to warm up the engine, I always give it at least ten minutes.

Outdoor plastic, in this cold, becomes brittle like glass, and will shatter. We've been using some plastic rope handle tubs for firewood lately, but they're not up to it, and an even slightly thrown or dropped log goes clear through.

Finally, this is a great time to weatherize your house from the inside, because with a 40-dollar laser thermometer you can find every tiny seep of cold air coming in, and every cold patch on a wall where the insulation has failed inside the wall. This time of year my wife thinks it's funny how obsessed with that thermometer I am, trying to find and fix the leaks that have so far eluded me.

So those are the sports we engage in and the sights and sounds of a Maine cold snap around the Womerlippi place.