Just like the rest of southern Ontario we got crushed with freezing cold weather the past week, although today is 6C and raining, go figure.  We had the joy of losing power for almost 5 hours, pipes freeze to the only bathroom in the house, getting an avalanche of compacted snow/ice blocking the only man door to the barn that you can open from outside and the absolute topper was the injector pump on the tractor freezing solid about 1/3 of the way in from the road completely blocking the laneway.  That was awesome.  Since then I have managed to tear out a not insignificant section of wall to get at the pipes that froze, dug out the barn by hand (because the tractor was still frozen solid) and I needed to check on the animals as well as get them fed and bring out more water to them.  Yesterday I was able to thaw out the injector pump on the tractor and get her running again so I could finish moving all the snow.  My awesome neighbour came to help me when the tractor died in the laneway then he stuck around in the -35C weather to plow out my laneway with his ATV.  You just gotta love rural neighbours.  Sometimes I get into sections of days or even weeks where I wonder “Why the hell am I doing this?”.  Then invariably I get a phone call or a drop in from a customer telling me how much they love not only the quality of what we produce here but what we are doing here.  That always brings a smile to me face and renews my passion for not only keeping this place running but making it better everyday.