After -25, 30 degrees F seems like summer

We sure had a cold snap last week. Our high was -14 and that was actual temperature, not wind chill. Will kept busy hauling in wood and I kept busy stuffing the stove at night, as well as during the day. We’re not burning the best of wood. Much is older poplar, not rotten but not the best wood. (We burn everything that makes smoke, taken out of our dead wood in the woods. With 200 acres, we’ll never run out of wood!

We’re using lots of firewood. Lucky for us, we’ve got a lot.

But now it’s warmed up and we’re only burning one stove, the living room stove, letting the kitchen range rest until it gets cold again or I need it for extra Christmas baking.

I got the Christmas tree decorated finally. Will brought it in two days ago. But it needed thawing out as there was snow clinging to its branches. Now it’s seeming a lot more like Christmas. I am having a hard time as I recently learned that our neighbor, Ervin Dahlen, back in Sturgeon Lake, had just passed away. His family and ours worked together for years, haying and other farming projects like working cattle, plowing, and planting. He was 97 and passed with his family around him. But it is still hard to have my “big brother” gone from this earth.

I finally got the Christmas tree decorated and lit up.

This week, I’ll begin the big holiday baking project: cookies, fruitcake, and other Christmas goodies. So I’m busy clearing the deck for that. (My kitchen is never “clean,” but littered with canning supplies, pots, pans, and ingredients.) I am looking forward to all that baking! Meanwhile, our dogs, Hondo and Sarge, contentedly snooze on the couch, resting up from their watchdog status.

The dogs are just enjoying sleeping on the sofa.

— Jackie

34 COMMENTS

  2. I envy your snow pictures! 40s and 50s with hardly any snow here in SW Montana. Not the norm for sure! We never have to ‘hope’ for a white Christmas, but looks like this year it’s pretty iffy.
    So sorry to hear about your dear friend’s passing.
    Have a merry, peaceful, and blessed Christmas!

  4. Merry Christmas to you and your family from the opposite side of MN. Thanks for all the information you share.
    Katherine

  5. So sorry to hear of the loss of your old friend. It is so hard to say goodbye to people who have been such an important part of our lives. Baking is good therapy. I have done most of the candy making for the season already. I provided several kinds to a bake sale and had enough left to freeze for when my family comes for Christmas. I will still bake bread and maybe an orange slice cake that my dad really likes. Our temps here are more moderate now. We are going to be in the mid 40’s the next week and no precip in the forecast. Sending prayers for a blessed week.

    • Thank you so much. I’m trying to get to baking but it seems like there’s always a roadblock. We met some friends while shopping for just a few things at Aldi today and visited a long while then went to Taco Bell to have lunch with them. A little more shopping then it was nearly dark. Boy, where does the day ever go?? I paid $4 a dozen for eggs today. That’s a lifetime high. Some eggs I saw today were over $7 a dozen. I came home and kissed my chickens on the beak!!

  6. So very sorry to read about the death of your friend. Sounds like he lived a long life and passed with his family near but it’s always so hard. Your tree is beautiful and love dogs laying around in a wood heated house. I’m always thankful for our well stocked wood storage building.

    • It was hard for me as we had been friends for many years and he helped me out so much while we were struggling financially, and I was pretty down. A load of hay sure lifted my spirits, I’ll tell you. And just knowing someone cared. Yes, he’ll be missed!
      We are so very grateful for all we have today, including our bounty of firewood.

      • Jackie , so sorry for your loss of friend. friends like him a treasure. his life will live on in your memory. brr!! -14 we get that around here, but not till late January on. this is just too early how can Santa fly his sleigh in such wind chill! have a very Merry Christmas :)

  7. We are in texas so don’t have a tree. Visiting our daughter and her family. Our kids are all over the states. Vermont, colorado, Texas, New Hampshire and Arizona. Don’t spend many Christmas’s at home. One lives 5 miles from us.

    • My best friend in New Mexico said she made a Christmas tree from three green-painted tumbleweeds for her kids, when they couldn’t afford to buy a tree and had none anywhere close.
      I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!!!

      • When we lived in southern Idaho my husband fell in love with sagebrush and wanted to use one for a Christmas tree. The kids and I nixed that idea. haha

  8. So sorry for the loss of your dear friend. Hope those wonderful memories ease your loss. The tree looks beautiful.

    • Thanks Wendy. I’m just thankful we had all those years of friendship. Our kids stay close and in contact with his family, even after all these years.

  9. Dear Jackie,
    I am sorry to hear your friend died, but what a wonderful time of the year to pass on. Remembering a day for Jesus’ birthday; and that we have a wonderful life waiting for us with Him. So don’t be too sad. Just put an angel on top of your tree this year and remember that your friend may very well be already in heaven as an angel.

    • Yep, we do have our angel on top of our tree, reminding us always for the reason we celebrate Christmas. It’s funny, as a youngster, on TV this time of the year, were all sorts of Nativity stories. Now it’s Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph and so on. Pretty sad, I think.

  11. Have a Merry Christmas! I finished decorating tree yesterday. My baking day (mostly bread) is planned for Friday. I just finished reading your novels…maybe the 3rd time I’ve read them…excellent books, Jackie.

    • Thank you so much Dorothy. They were fun to write too. I miss Jess and everyone so am “writing” the fifth book in my head as I do other things.
      I have plenty of baking planned for this week and weekend. Getting geared up now.
      Merry Christmas!!

  12. Our daughter brought us no-bake peanut butter cookies; so sweet I can’t eat them. I quit baking years ago, especially with refined, processed granulated, table sugar. I use xylitol, but don’t usually bake “goodies” at all. My poor husband. He loves sweets.

    • I can’t envision not baking goodies for the holidays. I think I’m obsessed! I like the doing more than the eating, even. Merry Christmas!!

  13. Your tree is beautiful. Please accept my condolences in the loss of a great friend. I have finished peanut butter balls today and need to pick out more pecans so I can get the turtles made. That’s all the candy I am making this year. I got the party mix made last week and plan to finish the cookies. I am making oatmeal raisin, pumpkin spice and chocolate drops. Have a blessed Christmas. You continue to inspire my activities.

    • Thanks Sheryl. I’m making Christmas cutout cookies that we’ll decorate this weekend. Then there are the Ritz cracker peanut butter sandwiches I dip in chocolate almond bark, spritz and refrigerator cookies.
      I still have canned pecans my friend in New Mexico, Juanita, and I picked out during the winter. She picked them in a pecan orchard while her son cut dead trees for the owner. Like me, she sure hated to see all those nuts lying on the ground “wasted”, as nobody was interested in picking them up. We visited all winter at her kitchen table, picking pecan meats. Such a good time. I think of that every time I open a jar! Merry Christmas to you and your family!

  15. I have 1 more goodie to “bake” for our homeless party tomorrow. Since I normally cook for 1, this gives me an opportunity to enjoy all my favorite Christmas treats, without over indulging. But, it has to be finished early.
    I hadn’t planned to decorate as I’m both alone and extremely busy this time of year. But, I now have a homeless single mom and her daughter housesitting for me while I visit family. So, I’m clearing out the clutter that accumulated while I was doing disaster relief at our church for the last 2 months, so there is a clean place for the tree.
    Hopefully, when I get home I’ll find time to get my spring garden in next month.

    • I’m so happy you help out the homeless. A lot of people don’t realize how very close they could be to homelessness, due to over-extending on credit cards, a job loss or other emergencies. No, they’re not all druggies, alcoholics and weirdos!! They could be you or me. Many blessings to you and them.
      Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!!

  16. Uh Jackie, Hondo says we’re gonna need a bigger couch.
    We had a few days with below zero “feels like” (a nice way of saying wind chill factor). Then it was damp and foggy. We’ve gone from a dusting of snow chance tonight to 1-3 inches of snow on Thursday.
    I will say moving 50 lb bags of feed is good exercise, I’m set for a while.

    • Hondo usually kicks Sarge off his couch. But that day, he grumpily allowed him to sleep there too. He hates it when Sarge uses his butt as a pillow, sighing dramatically.
      We’ve gotten above zero but are headed below tonight and Thursday, with snow. Oh well, it’s that time of the year.

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