Well, today was mild, historically speaking. The outside temp probably got up to 10 F. Last night it might have been -5, enough for me to check my pipes when I woke. But the winds of about 15mph sustained, gusts to 20, made it feel like about -18 F all day.
A thin wind, we say in Yorkshire, because it can go right through you.
How cold is -5 F? That would be -21 C. While minus 20 F is -28 C.
The sheep didn't go outside much. They, whoever they "they" are, say sheep can do without shelter in Maine, but I don't believe it. Whenever I did go out, to feed and water the beasts, walk dogz or bring in firewood, it took just a few moments for gobs of frozen breath to form on my beard.
But the wood stoves are drawing very well indeed.
In Britain, if I ever experienced this frosty face thing, it would be at the top of Cairngorm or the Ben. We get weather here at 500 feet that only occurs at 4,000 feet back home in the yUKe. I can well remember the coldest temperature I ever experienced at an inhabited altitude in Britain, during an arctic blast experienced while camped in a byre close to Braemar with the RAF Mountain Rescue. It was -33 C, and set a record for the town, getting on BBC Scotland, which is why I remember it.
We get that kind of cold almost every year in Maine.
A real cold night around here, which we usually get once or twice a winter, would be -20 or -25 F, or -28 to -31 C. Those kinds of nights we use the oil hot air furnace to keep the pipes from freezing. I have hot air outlets set up to blast air wherever there are pipes.
That's the only use, really, we put that furnace to, except for when we get house-sitters inexperienced with wood stoves.
When it's this cold, though, those woodstoves will go through a cord of wood in a week. It's a good job it usually doesn't stay this cold for very long. We'd go through a lot of trees.
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Welcome to our Farm Blog.
The purpose of this blog is for Aimee and I to communicate with friends and family, with those of our students, and other folks in general who are interested in homesteading and farming activities.
The earliest posts, at the very end of the blog, tell the story of the Great Farm, our purchase of a fragment of that farm, the renovation of the homestead and its populating with people and animals. Go all the way to the last post in the archive and read backwards from there to get it in chronological order.
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