Deeper freeze
Doesn't this picture just look cold? This was 9 am Tuesday, when the temperature
had warmed slightly, up to about -1 F. The creek was starting to
freeze over, and had risen about a foot due to (I assume) narrowing of
the sinkhole opening from ice.
Four
hours later, if anything, there was more ice formation. (The view
above is from the opposite bank compared to the first photo.)
Mark had to get out there in hip waders
to break through the ice and push icebergs out of the way so I could
tiptoe across in my calf-high boots (and so the truck wouldn't bog down
in frozen water).
We tried to keep Lucy out
of the frigid water, but she wasn't interested in being coddled.
Here she is shaking out the damp after a swim across the creek.
The water soon froze into ice crystals in her fur.
Those of you who haven't
been to the farm in person might not realize how amazing the photo above
is. This is the old path of the creek, aka the alligator swamp,
and the truck is rolling over the ice without cracking it. That
means there must be at least eighteen inches of solid ice under those
wheels!
The high Tuesday was 15 degrees, but the sun was brilliant enough to
cause some thawing. By the time we finished three rounds of
hauling, about 3:30 pm, the creek had gone back down to normal levels
and some of the snow was gone. And Mark and I were thrilled to
have survived the cold adventure!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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