You see how you fit into this cosmic schema and you see how all is family from one side of the horizon to the other. It is clear to you how the cycles of morning to evening and evening to morning, from springtime to next springtime, form birth to death to birth, all follow similar and necessary trajectories.
-Peter London, Drawing Closer to Nature

The astronomical outlook for the second week of deep winter:
The Owl Nesting Moon enters its final quarter on Jan. 11 at 5:45 p.m. After that, it wanes through the middle of the month, rising after midnight, setting in the afternoon, and moving overhead in the middle of the morning.

January temperatures
January usually produces an average of nine days in the 20s, three days with highs only in the teens, and one day when the temperature does not get above 10 degrees. About 12 days usually heat up to the 30s, and there can be up to five days in the 40s and 50s.

An average of two mornings dip below zero (Jan. 9 and 11 are the days most likely to see such cold). Ten to 15 afternoons keep their temperatures below freezing, and often those days come together, creating the definitive freeze of deep winter.

The coldest January days (those with at least a 40 percent chance for highs below 20 degrees) are Jan. 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 18, and 25. The days with better than a 20 percent chance for highs above 50 are Jan. 4, 16, 17, and 24.

Last January was almost 10 degrees above normal, and after Januarys during which the temperature rises eight or more degrees above normal, a January at or below normal often occurs. However, even though odds should favor a return to more typical January conditions, history does offer a precedent for two hot Januarys in a row (during the winters of 1906 and 1907, 1989 and 1990, and 1932, 1933 and 1934). And the warmest January in history (40 degrees in 1932) was followed by two mild Januarys.

Wintercount
Sixteen major cold fronts reach this area between the end of late fall and the beginning of early spring. The first five weather systems arrived in December. January brings seven more; they ordinarily arrive on Jan. 1, 5, 10, 15, 19, 25 and 31.

Week in nature
When the birds or the winds have taken all the goldenrod and aster seeds, then the coldest part of winter will have passed.

When you find pale Asian ladybugs emerging in the warmth of your sunny windowsills, then look for spring flower displays in nurseries and grocery stores.

Almanack literature
The Case of the Frozen Bullfrogs by Susan Perkins, Hardtimes Farm, Ky.
Years ago, when I still lived in Missouri, I would talk on the phone with my friend Carol. We had a lot in common and never ran out of stories to tell. We both loved the country, we both had a milk cow, made a garden, picked berries and owned horses.

During one of our conversations, Carol told me her husband brought a mess of bullfrogs home the night before, and she cleaned them and put them in the freezer. It was early May.

“Carol,” I said, “it’s not frog hunting season.”

“I know,” she said, “but you know Dave.”

Later that day, a friend stopped by for coffee. Curt and I told him about the frog hunting story. Together, we hatched a plan to fix the illegal hunter, a lesson he would never forget.

Our friend Delbert called Carol’s house and said, “This is the Missouri conservation department, and we have a report on some illegal frogs that may be in your possession. We are sending a game warden to your house to inspect your freezer.” With that, he hung up.

I waited five minutes and called Carol.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh my God!” she said. “The game warden is on his way to check my freezer for bullfrogs. I have an owl in there I plan on mounting and…”

“Quick,” I said, “Bring them over here and put them in my freezer and fast. They will never find them here.”

I hung up the phone, and we laughed for 10 minutes. Suddenly, a cloud of smoke came over the hill on our dirt road, and we knew it had to be Dave.

He came up the stairs of our house and peeked down the basement steps where we were all sitting in the basement.

“I think someone was following me!” he said, out of breath. He ran to the big freezer we kept in our basement and put the frog legs inside. We waited some time before we ate every one of those frog legs. Years later I told Carol about the joke. She fell out laughing and said, “Dave has never hunted frogs illegally since that day.”

They have been divorced for years, so she loved the trick we pulled on her and her now ex-husband.

She said,” How dumb could we be? Game wardens don’t call before a raid!”

Send your stories to Poor Will at P.O. Box 431, Yellow Springs, OH 45387. Three dollars will be paid to the author of any tale that appears in this column.

Poor Will’s Scrambler
In order to estimate your Scrambler IQ, award yourself 15 points for each word unscrambled, adding a 50-point bonus for getting all of them correct.

UHSH, HUSH
HLUSB, BLUSH
URCHS, CRUSH
UMHS, MUSH
SUHPL, PLUSH
SSHLU, SLUSH
HHSSU, SHUSH
HSRHUT, THRUSH
SUHR, RUSH
HSUG, GUSH

Here’s this week’s rhyming Scrambler:

SUTB
SUTRC
SUTD
TUSG
UTJS
TMSU
TSJDAU
UUAGTS
TTSRSMIU
TSUCREIP
AUSSTTDR

Poor Will’s Almanack for 2007 is now available in a newsprint format. Call toll-free at 1-888-445-9456 to order your copy.

This farm news was published in the Jan. 3, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.