The cold front has settled in for the duration. The temperature is now well below zero, and it appears as though in the next few days that it will drop further. This scares me. I fear for the chickens, goats, and horses. And if a wind springs up, we’ll maybe have a few animal deaths. The chickens can’t handle much more of this.

I will put the horse and goat blankets on our animals tomorrow if the temperature goes below -10˚ F. I might find and put a hot water bottle in with the chickens.

The water situation grows increasingly more critical as the temperature drops. The horses and goats have to drink right away or else their water freezes. And if their water freezes, they miss out on drinking. And the colder it is, the shorter their drinking window of time.

I sometimes wonder if in the future, after the human race has died out and then come back, if my computer will be found and my dispatches read by the new race. If so, I have something that I want to tell all you.

This is that here on planet earth, these are very troubled times. We are experiencing extremely cold and extreme warm temperatures. Very few are concerned about this – what does have people most concerned is the economy. We are waging war with one another on four continents – wars that are immoral and unethical. Civilians are taken hostage routinely, women are raped, and kids are tortured. This is in the name of religion.

I don’t know what might take us out – an asteroid might hit the planet, or the earth, which is tilting one way might fall onto its ass. Most likely, what’s going to do us in is going to be our own stupidity and short sightedness.

Our political leaders are lacking in any kind of decorum – there is no intelligent debate going on here, so beam me up.

I wonder what it would be like if there was a rapture. I once saw a movie on this -- some people looked around and their family members and friends were suddenly gone. I think a real rapture, if there was one, would have people floating off, to the strains of some kind of classical music, or maybe you can’t always get what you want.

People are still reproducing, and people are still ohhing and awing over their offspring. It does not seem to me to make sense, having children in this day and age. It has to be a deeply rooted biological imperative. What the child bearers fail to realize (and I am speaking of those in developed countries, like the U.S., is that these lovely individuals will become big time consumers. I say big time because more energy and resources are consumed here than in any other place in the world.

I do wonder if it’s going to warm up here. How cold can it get? What are the animals going to be able to withstand? I don’t want to know.

Next: 28. 1/28/24: Watching the Month Die Down