Saturday January 12th

When Frank came home from the dance about four o'clock this morning he said that it had been raining but was then snowing a nice steady storm. Big flakes coming right straight down and barely freezing. So when we got up about seven I was very surprised to see a terrific blizzard raging and on going out to find the thermometer registering zero. It has kept it up all day and has kept getting colder. Tonight it was 10° below zero. We have done nothing whatever outside today except hike from the house to the barn & back again two or three times and all we did in the barn was to fieed the stock and milk. We were out of hay in the old barn so all we could give the cows was straw and they got no water all day. It was out of the question to try to get hay over to them. Dad went downtown this morning to see if they were alive down home and he could hardly manage to get through Jack's field. The {gus?} was very poor down at Aunty's and Mr. & Mrs. Millman had come the night before. Mr. Millman wanted to go to Simcoe on business but the {?} car only got about two miles up the track and had to work its way back and stay back and {?} Grand Trunk trains except the {?} Woodstock, it got as far as Norich this morning didn't attempt to go out at all. Frank and I just sat around the stove and read most of the day and this afternoon I made a list of all our bulletins and reports issued by the two departments of Agriculture {Dominion?} & Provincial. We had a dandy coal fire all day, the stove was red hot part of the time but we could see our breath right over it and it was freezing all day in our room. There are little snow drifts all over the house as the snow is so fine it blows in the smallest cracks and there are lots of cracks in this house that aren't microscopic in size. The snow blew in between the baseboard & the floor in the kitchen even after Dad had plugged it up as well as he could with rags and it didn't melt all day although it wasn't six feet away from the stove. Nice day but windy.

Sunday January13th We didn't get up till eight o'clock this morning and found the storm had not abated in the least although the thermometer was up to zero. I went out to the barn and found the door had blown open between the calves pen & the barn floor and the calves especially Daisy May's were covered with snow which {?} heat.