All is well as the cold passes through

Well, as of this morning just at the absolute worst of the temperature and wind had passed, I went out for farm chores. Everyone was alive as of that time, and seemed relatively healthy if not happy. You can tell that rabbits aren't doing optimally when they are eating less than their normal daily consumption rate. That means they aren't getting enough water usually, and are probably huddling together. My design for the hutches has again been confirmed to me as all of the rabbits, even the ones that usually avoid the private areas were using them when checked on. Talking to them when I go out brought them out to their water bottles where they get as much as they can before they ice over.

The chickens are also alive and relatively well. I wasn't able to get a photo of them since I'm not letting them out of the coop today for their health and well being. In the coop it was too dark, and they were moving too fast for my phone camera to cope with. Over night I stapled a cloth over their window on the North side to prevent too much wind from being a problem, and it seems to have worked. I need to remove the cloth tomorrow morning, but I'm leaving it on for the day today because it's still quite windy and cold. To try to help with the cold in the coop, which is noticeably warmer than outside, I put hot water into the coop with them since that should take longer to freeze, and the warm air can't hurt. My only real concern is the humidity and accumulating funk in the coop while it's buttoned up. It should be ok for just a day though.
Inside we're doing well and have been keeping the house at a good 70 - 75 degrees to keep the Lady of the House and the Critter comfortable. When we wake up during the night for the Lady of the House to feed the Critter, I go, do laundry, and tend the wood stove. So the sight Right is a very familiar one to me. I actually love the sight of the burning wood stove when I come down because it means it's still going. All I have to do when it's like this is shift the coals, throw on some wood, and close the door. I haven't mastered the wood stove, but it has become a much less onerous task to maintain over the night. The worst part was having to go downstairs to the basement which is very cold to shift the laundry and run the dryer. When that's the worst part of waking up in the night, we're doing fairly well.

Below is the house this morning on the way out. At first when I was out doing rabbit chores I was concerned how much smoke was coming out of the chimney since most of the time we barely have any smoke coming out of the chimney because of how efficiently our stove runs. I realized when I went back in and saw that we were burning efficiently, it's not smoke. It was so cold this morning that the stack is actually just spewing condensing hot air mixed with smoke. Just thought it was kind of pretty once I realized we weren't having efficiency problems. I do have to say though, it is a bit odd when the wind is so strong that particularly bad gusts up at roof top level can effect the fire in the wood stove almost 4 floors down.