Last night was meteorologially a bit tempestuous. We had rain, snow, ice, wind. Always wind here. We’ve had the door blow open on us before, so we locked it.

This morning, husband woke me up in the before-dawn time to tell me the lock is frozen and the door won’t open.

We tried a few things, but nothing worked, so he crawled out the goat door in the barn section to go to work. He also stopped off at the gas station to pick up some lock de-icer so he can let us all out this evening.

In case of an emergency, we still have the goat door for egress, but in the meantime, we have old-fashioned, low-tech science.

Hot water bottle, boiling kettle, lots of time. If it works, great! If not, we havent lost anything but time.