
It was 23 degrees when I went out to feed this morning. Today was a tank top-thermal shirt-underarmor shirt-fleece sweater-hoody-Carhartt's jacket-long underwear-Carhartt pants-and 2 pairs of wool socks-kind-of-day. I felt like a giant marshmallow. My fingerless gloves, that up until now have done the trick, proved entirely insufficient today.

Once I had finished bundling myself and managed to squeeze myself out the door, this is what I saw:
Icicles hanging from the raspberry trellis:

Stoic donkeys, who met me at the fence closest to the house:

..and then beat me back up to the barn:

A frozen stocktank with a lone, orange goldfish still swimming at the very bottom:

A devoted farm pup, shivering in the cold, who refused to go back into the house:

Hearty eaters who knock their hay buckets over after the second bite:

Donkeys with fuzzy winter brows who will stop anything they're doing to have a carrot coin:

An alien creature with tentacles that used to be a Japanese maple:

Two goats telling me they haven't been fed in a week:

A disgusted face looking at a frozen water bucket:

Slippery feet on frozen surfaces:

Goat displeasure expressed at being left so soon:

...and then using a sweet face to try to coax me to
please stay just a bit longer:

An oatmeal breakfast hand delivered to the spoiled chickens of Critter Farm:

...which the chickens devoured with great gusto:

An awesomely feathered head of my girl, Dottie (pretty girl on the right), who hasn't had a full head of feathers in almost two years!:

The removable wedge used to secure the coop door frozen solid to the door itself:

Frozen chicken waterers:

...thawed with a 5 gallon bucket of hot water:

And a beautiful face, unexpectedly appearing around the corner of the coop, who left me with a smile on mine:

Tonight, it's supposed to get down to 15 degrees, much colder than we normally get in our rainforest atmosphere of northwest Oregon.