Negative 4 degrees

Ice on the car windows first thing this morning, creating beautiful and unique ephemeral patterns. 

The frost took a while to lift and consequently I had a slow start to the day with no particular jobs to do, except to feed the menagerie over the road. I did that in record time so that I could get back indoors and warm up.

I don’t know if the animals were disturbed in the night, but three of the five horses, two of the five sheep and one of the three steers have broken out of their particular paddocks and are all mixed up in another area. Since they are safely within the property still, they are all playing nicely together, and my neighbours are due home later this afternoon, I decided not to intervene.

At least the dogs and hens are all in the right place. Actually, that’s quite unusual: I often find hens free ranging over their veg beds when I’m on duty.

I’ve done some line trimming and planted a few trees. And I called it a day in the middle of the afternoon to sit in the sun and read a book. Just because I could.