Snow and the Arctic Blast

The weather here has been interesting this week. The weather people on the news are calling it the Arctic Blast. It hasnt been above freezing for almost 5 days for the high and into the low teens at night with more cold to come. The boys have had late start for school the last 2 days and no school today and the rest of the week doesnt look good. At least Christmas break starts next week. The hoses and faucets have been frozen for 3 days (water lines are only buried 18"-2 ft. here if you are lucky), and we have to bucket water in the hay cart down to the sheep in the field. The worst part is watching the water freeze as soon as the ice is broken and taken out of the troughs and freezing in the hoses before you can take them off of the faucet and drain them. We have been spending a lot of time breaking ice. We had mud until everything froze up so now the uneven muddy soil has all froze up with water pockets in them and the horses and sheep are having hell trying to walk. I grew up in northern Nevada where there can be some rough and unpredictable weather but up here this type of weather is a rare occaision and can be harder to deal with. We have 14 ewes in the barn that are bagging up and I really hope they wait this out to lamb when it warms up. The lamb jugs are set up and I have my lamb covers ready to go so I'm keeping my fingers crossed they will wait. Thank goodness we still have power or we would really be in a mess. We woke up this morning to snow which is supposed to last through tomorrow with some freezing rain in between. I am worried about hubby driving home from work tonight and hope he can leave early. Can I to go to Hawaii now please!
This is picture looking out from our back porch towards the barn. Notice the hose stretched out on the ground. Its frozen hard as a rock.

Here is another picture of the sheep in the field.

I have been working on some Christmas presents to get them finished and did some spinning last night. I am really behind on my spinning and have a bunch of batts I need to get spun up. Time hasnt allowed for spinning lately. Here are my latest projects:
These are some Rapunzel socks I made to send to our dear friend in Louisiana. They were fun and the first socks I have done toe up. The yarn is some really soft handspun Romney cross wool, sport/worsted weight. Fairly easy sock pattern and fun to work on.

I spun up some N/C Romney and alpaca into a bulky two ply and I made a dickie for my FIL. He lives in Northern CA where they have cold winters and this will keep him warm when he is out doing chores and lambing. I hope he likes it. With the weather here now I have almost been tempted to keep it but I wont have time to make another one in time for Christmas.

Here are pictures of a couple of hats I made for the boys. They were supposed to be Christmas presents but they need them now so they got them a few days early. They are both made from some of my stash handspun yarn.

The boys want to help me make Christmas cookies this afternoon so that should keep us busy until chores tonight. Then its hot chocolate and some TV and bedtime.