Yep, It's January

January in Michigan means cold.  C.O.L.D.  Wind, wind chills, bundling up for outdoor chores.  You see, a lot of the cold is due to having more clear skies in January than in the months on either side of it.  Clear skies means less heat held down near where we are, close to the ground.  Add in the wind roaring across the fields, and, well, it's nose hair freezing cold outside.

This week has been a typical January cold snap.  Single digit temps in the mornings, highs maybe in the teens, windchills in the negative teens.  It's been a cold day's work at the horse farm.  The barn protects me from the wind, but it is still freezing inside.

Here is a picture I snapped the other morning while I was collecting water buckets to knock ice out of them so they could be refilled with water for the horses to get a drink.  Sometime between dinner feeding and morning feeding, one of the barn cats must have tried to get a drink from this bucket, and found it frozen.  Too frozen to drink, but still soft enough ice to create indentations where the cat rested it's feet.

Another cool thing (pun intended, LOL) about a cold snap in January is the awesome colors of the sunrises.  Here are pics from two different days this week, taken at different ends of the horse farm.

I think, perhaps, January is one of my favorite months.  It's raw, and it's brutal, but it is also full of beauty and wonder if I just look.