This morning I went online to see what we had to to for the animals this weekend, and I saw a forecast unlike any other I have seen in my nearly two decades of being in upstate New York. The National Weather Service says that from 1. a.m. tomorrow to mid-day Monday,  there will be heavy snow, winds gusting up to 60 miles per hour, sub-zero temperatures and wind chill temperatures of up to 55 below zero. I have been frostbitten twice,  it is no fun,  I feel it in my affected fingers and toes whenever it is cold. Eastern New England will get it worse.

If the forecast is correct – I think it is – then we will have to take the cold and the wind very seriously and take extra steps to protect the animals, none of whom have ever experienced such extreme weather. Neither, for that matter, have me or Maria. For the first time, I won’t let Red work out in the snow. We will open up an old interior cow stall for the donkeys inside the barn, and we will feed the animals under the shelter of the Pole Barn.

We’ll put down old dried up hay for them to lie on if they wish, it may also help to keep their hooves warmer.

We will haul some water into the barn for them to drink so they don’t have to go outside to heated bucket, we will only go outside for a minute or two – we will stack the hay up inside the barn and throw it onto pallets rather than into the outside feeder. Tyler came by this morning, we stacked the new cord of firewood onto the porch, covered it in tarpaulins.

We’ll lock the chickens in their coop until Monday, we’ll put corn mash in the coop and warm water several times a day. The dogs will go out for a couple of minutes at a time two or three times a day until Monday at mid-day when the weather is supposed to settle. We’ve raked the snow off of the roofs, we will plan on sleeping downstairs, in those winds our bedroom will be frigid. We will expect some power outage – the blog may be down – although that is uncertain. We have food and water, we’ll fill the bathtub with extra water so we can keep the toilet going.

I do hope the power stays on, this will be no time to be hauling water buckets around the pasture, and I feel for the animals in this cold, they do not squawk and complaint, but this will be an uncomfortable time for them and for us. Also challenging and exciting. I’ll be posting words and photos for as long as I can.

We will also keep our perspective, there is something challenging and exciting about riding out a storm well. We all expect to be alive and well on the other side, life will go on. I expect to learn something, perhaps take some beautiful photos, share another chapter with Maria, celebrate what it means to be a human being living a very real life. The challenge for us is not to avoid difficulty, but to handle it well.