it got down to 14 below last night. just about 0 now and the sun feels good. we ended up with right at 10 inches of snow and it drifted a little. we had some hunters out and they buried their pickup trying to cross a drifted in crick crossing. he finally gave up and phoned. took the tractor down there and he had snow piled up higher than his pickup on both sides... said he did it all by hand, but threw in the towel when he realized he had a few feet under neath the pickup he was never going to get to the bottom of. pulled him out in no time and he says "i should have just called to start with" :lol:
last week a hydrant off the main county water line broke open 6 feet under. which means no water coming into our place. took two days for them to come fix it. the next evening we had no water again. i guess the fella running the backhoe packed it a little ruff backfilling the hole and it rebroke it. another couple days to get back out and fix it. anyhow, both 20,000 gallon cisterns went dry while waiting. cows destroyed one of my temporary water set ups fighting for last drops of water - glad there was snow to lick. nothing but tire tanks from now on. slow drippy leak in water manifold out of my control culvert for water. ain't gonna mess with it til it gets back above freezing, so much fun to work with water in this weather.
stay close to the fire
added - about a month and a half til historic average highs start going in the right direction