Winter: The Wild & Woolies

It always seems like spring and summer days are the idyllic times of a country existence but I also really love the stormy winter nights when it's cold and theres a gale blowing and the rain is horizontal.  Of course it's not so pleasant having to go outside to tend all the animals: squelching around in the mud at a 45° angle with leaking gumboots and drips going down my neck from my not-properly-waterproofed raincoat.  And stepping in squishy sheep poo on my way down the hill and landing flat on my back.
 
But it's worth it all to come inside to a nice warm fire and the smell of wood smoke, getting into dry clothes and joining the two furry family members by the fire who obviously think by their expressions that I must be mad to voluntarily go out in THAT.  Then I can read my Georgette Heyer novel with a mug of hot chocolate with the knowledge the goats and sheep are cosy in their shelters with hay to munch on and the chooks are cuddled up on their perches (except for the weird ones who like a bit of night-time excitement and prefer to roost up trees)...
The problem is, what usually happens is I wake up at 2am that night when the gale's at full force and start wondering if I really did shut that window in my studio...   (I don't want a repeat of last time when it got ripped off its hinges and thrown halfway across the paddock) and so it's back on with the leaky gumboots, the soggy raincoat, and out into the howling blackness.  I'm greeted by a chorus of yells from the goats as I splosh past their shed - "HI MUM!  What on earth are YOU doing out here at this time of night?!"

Sometimes I really wonder...