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Bitter cold yesterday with flurries and 20 mph winds. I barely got anything done construction-wise on the barn. The snow began to stick towards evening and now everything is covered in an icy white crust.

Brooke and Rachael and I went up to shut up the chickens at dark, and Brooke said, "I wonder if the wild guineas will be in the coop." And they were. The dark adults panicked when we came up to shut the doors, one flying towards the main door and ending up roosting above the light. The young ones were all calmly roosting on steps of the ladder. So last night we had 16 guineas. They'll probably go back home tomorrow.

I screwed up a few sheets of OSB to Rita's stall to give her a small windbreak for the night. We also set the stock tank on its side and moved over a cage with hay bales on it to give her an additional windbreak. She was pretty jittery all day. When the chickens wandered into the corner of her stall where she's fed to peck up spilled grain, she lost it and drove them off, thrusting her head under the stall boards to get them. Once she'd succeeded in driving them off, she bucked and ran in a circle in her stall several times, stamping her hooves and snorting. I guess she was making a statement.

Last night's milking was especially brutal with the cold and wind. Rita's milk froze to the outside of the pail.
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