Minnesota Farmer

This mornings temperature was 9 degrees.  Baby it’s could out there.  My morning bus trip got me thinking about how the cold affects water ponds of different sizes and types.

As an example my small (200 gallon) fish pond was frozen over, with ice thick enough to hold a cat on sunday, with only 30 degree temps.  The cat was looking for a drink and found the ice in the way.  I got out my pond heater and we now have an open water pond again.

Many of the ponds and small lakes were showing ice on their edges on Sunday.  Until we had the cold this morning it did not take too large a body of water to resist the freeze.  Last night the temperatures went down and a cold north wind blew all of the smaller bodies of water to ice covered by morning.

The river has been interesting lately.  There have been some areas of ice on the edge that formed in the last few days.  Today small icebergs had broken loose and were floating down the river.  In places. where a river bend or bridge could capture those ice chunks, the whole river had been covered with ice.  A few more days like this and we’ll have ice on all of our water bodies.

This is shaping up to be an early freeze up.  The ground is getting a good depth of frozen earth now.  I don’t have my snow fence in yet, but it looks like I had better get those posts pounded in soon or not at all.

A cold Thanksgiving is forecast.  We still have some ice covered roads and the weather tomorrow will not help.  We could get more ice and snow wednesday.  Be careful as you travel for thanksgiving.

Michael