December 10 – Temperatures this morning fell to 16 degrees F.  That’s the coldest its been all year at least as far as I can remember.  It has gotten progressively colder over the past few days, each morning getting colder than the previous by a few degrees.  The barn is completely frozen up and I’ve been hauling buckets of warm water from the house twice a day for the sheep and horses, exhausting!  

The vegetable garden looks so sad.  The Swiss Chard has wilted away as well as the young red leaf lettuce plants that were just coming up from the fall planting.  Even the fall kale has colapsed.  The leeks look bad and have wilted down too.  It doesn’t looks like anything can withstand such extreme cold. 

In the green house I have a few seedlings, still in trays.  The lettuce starts have died but the arugula, endive, kale and turnips still look ok.  I’ve been running a milkhouse heater at night to try to minimize the damage.  Its not keeping it above freezing but it is raising the temperature about 15 to 20 degrees.  The days have been beautiful and sunny raising the green house temperature into the low 70’s.  My potted herbs still look good.  I’ve been able to harvest Italian parsley, rosemary and cilantro but the fushias are dying back.