The Vortex is a good work for this week, we are in an impressive cold wave, it was – 15 this morning at the farm, we did the morning chores in a record breaking five minutes. The manure can wait awhile for shoveling. I dumped a bucket of water in the heated water tank and Maria dumped an armful of hay in the big feeder.

We put a tub of warm water in with the chickens – it will free in a half an hour, they are not coming out of the roost today. The dots rush out and in in minutes and have no interest in sniffing or running around. “They  used to call this winter,” a farmer told me, “now it is some kind of Vortex.” I explained to him that extreme weather has now become a big business as well as an environmental catastrophe. Life in our times.

We’ve started up the cars, given thanks for our frost-free water line (a very good move, it looks like) and are counting the hours to our trip to Disney World next Tuesday, assuming we can make it. Lots of stuff happening around here this week. It would be nice to be warm.