Cold Doesn't Even Begin To Describe It

 We knew it would be coming. You can't spend all of a Central Plains winter working and being outside in nothing but a T-shirt and windbreaker, or a sweatshirt. At some point you KNOW you're going to pay for that. Usually we get brutally cold for a few days, five at the most in mid to late January. Sometimes we get a warning shot across our bow for a couple days in December. But for the most part, as cold, miserable and windy as the storms are, they are quick to pass, and normal temperatures creep in and let us enjoy winter without considering moving the whole farm to a warmer climate, like Greenland.

The snowfall this year hasn't been funny either. Instead of coming down one or two inches at a time, melting off the roads shortly after we plow, and then off the grass a couple days later. This year it has  come down down by the mountain load. And it has stayed, in one case a dump of 14 heavy,wet inches.

Now has come the cold. It started a few days ago with temperatures dipping well below freezing and it's stayed there, day and night, and it will for at least the next 10 days. (17 days below freezing is what it ended up being.) In fact, our temperatures will be below 10'F as a HIGH temperature for the next 7 days. Wind chills will be dropping us to -40'F this weekend. Luckily, the animals are kept out of the wind and we spend as little time in it as possible. (Our lowest real temp was -31 and wind chill that night was -45'F.)

The alpacas can handle the cold out of the wind. They have thick rubber mats on their stall floors and a DEEP layer of hay/straw on top of that to snuggle into at night. They have full access to inside the barn, which does stay a few degrees warmer than outside. They get extra food rations, and have heated water at all times. Yesterday, I wrangled them and put their coats on them. That will make them even happier. They do get bored, and when the sun comes out, they do wander down the pasture and have some hay in the shed, wrestle, or just go for a run.

Don't fret. The hens are just fine too. Nights are brutal, but their well designed coop and run are draft free, and the clear panels allow heat to build on a sunny day. Today when the temperature was only 6 degrees at lunch, it was 24 in the coop. I'm sure we'll have a couple end up with frostbite on their combs, but that happens every winter. They too have heated water and get extra feed, to include warm veggies for breakfast and dinner.  They've been as low as -18'F before, so I'm not worried about them. Merriweather, at age 6.5, has been put in the 42 degree workshop. She's old and gets a pamper spa week. 

So if I'm not outside, what am I doing? Last week I had a ball being the weekly host at @smallholdingsUK on Twitter. If you twitter, check it out.  It is a group of small land holders, originally only in the UK, but now all over the world. We share what we do, where we are, and how we do things. It's a great way to travel and meet new people and get new ideas without stepping out the door. :::Waving to all my new friends.:::

I've also snuck down to the sewing room. I can't sew while Doc is working in his office, so my pile of work has been waiting for me. I had a small project I could work on while he was upstairs working on non-school things. 

A few weeks ago I found a yard of very high quality flannel at the local charity shop for only $1. At the time I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but it followed me home anyway. I found a list of things online that you can do with bits of flannel. I passed on the washable swifter type dusters and found someone that was making re-usable/washable 'paper' towels that snapped together and rolled up. What a great idea! I decided to forgot the cute snap idea and just went with the quilted rag idea.

I purchased a yard of grey terrycloth with my coupon for $5 and set to work.

I washed and dried both to mitigate shrinkage. I placed the flannel on the terry and pinned it all over. Wrong. Wrinkle planet. Wrinkles everywhere. That wouldn't do at all. I removed all the pins and put the flannel UNDER the terry and pinned- much better. 

Then I simply used the machine to sew a diagonal line across the whole thing and then mirrored that line about every 2.5 inches to quilt the two pieces together. Then I figured the best cut size to minimize waste, which turned out to be 11 inches square with only a tiny bit of loss to square the piece up.

I ended up with 12 quilted rags. They needed the diagonal that goes the other way which was faster and easier on an 11 inch piece than a giant panel. Then I simply finished off the edges with the serger. 12 nice mop up rags or dust cloths for only $5 and two hours at the machine!

Another treasure at the charity shop. a 12 ounce glass peanut butter jar full of pins, old sharp sewing pins and long hat pins, as well as tailor pins. The BEST treasure this time was a roll of pale lilac table cloth. It is 44 inches across and started as 100 foot long. There is at least 50 feet there as it almost filled it's original box. It feels like percale cotton. I'll test it. If nothing else it will be GREAT for pattern mock-up. If it's cotton, then a matching historic 1840 skirt/shirt set it is! How much was it. Well it was on half price sale. $2.50 yup. So check your charity shops !