Lavender and orange sky at sunriseFriday morning was the usual Chaos Friday. I got my post up and cleaned up the kitchen. I got the milk order done and my helper friend arrived at 8AM. He started bringing in wood while I cleaned up the kitchen. I had tried to get an appointment for the tooth but there was nothing until next Thursday.

Thursday was my 7th anniversary on HIVE. I can’t believe I’ve been posting nearly every day for 7 years.2018IntroI got a lot of questions about how I got started growing my own food so I wrote a second IntroI entered a lot of contests, wrote about life on the farm, and wrote some informational posts. I’d set up a calendar with a topic every day for 90 days.

On Thursday morning I got the post up, got a shower and sat down to work on Christmas lights. I’d gotten about half of them done on Tuesday. Many were no longer working properly but the newer ones were on the bottom of the tree so I hoped things would go faster.

This is what the north side thermometer read on Wednesday morning at 5:00AM. I got my post up and the fires really going; the masonry heater was reading 185F and it was barely 70F in the living room. The forecast was for sun which would help warm the house.

On Tuesday morning the thermometer read -12F. The masonry heater was radiating at 168F but the living room was only 68F. You know it’s cold out when that happens!It was supposed to be sunny, but it was mostly weak sun through clouds, so I kept the wood stove going all day. I didn’t put more wood in the masonry heater because, you know, sun was supposed to shine and I had to work in the living room.

Azalea in snowMonday morning I was up early and resumed editing the photos and got the first post up. I took a break and got laundry started. Then I got the 2nd post up while I had a warm cup of hot cacao.We had gotten at least 6” of snow in the night. My brother had to go to work and Tom wasn’t going to be available to plow.