It’s January 14, 2026, and tomorrow’s forecast says tomorrow’s low is -8°F with wind chills flirting with -25°F. My chickens are already doing that puffed-up penguin waddle, feathers fluffed to maximum floof, staring at me like I personally ordered this arctic apocalypse from Amazon Prime. They’re huddled under the heat lamp like tiny feathered survivalists, plotting their escape to Florida.
Meanwhile, I’m in here pressure-canning navy beans like it’s 1943 and rationing is back. The Presto electric canner is humming, five quarts at a time, because apparently my arthritis vetoed the old stove-top monster that could do seven. Every time the gauge hits 11 pounds and the jiggler starts dancing, I feel like I’m running a wartime kitchen in a fallout shelter. Victory gardens, eat your heart out, I’m growing my own ammo for the next soup siege.
But here’s the scary part: history says Ohio winters used to be this bad all the time. Back in the 1970s–80s, we had winters so cold the Miami River froze solid enough for people to ice-skate downtown. My grandma used to tell stories of hanging laundry outside in January and it freezing stiff as cardboard before she could pin the last sock. She’d laugh and say, “We didn’t have global warming back then, just global warning.”
Now the chickens are giving me side-eye through the window, like they know something I don’t. Maybe they sense the next polar vortex is coming to finish what 1978 started. Or maybe they’re just mad I didn’t knit them little sweaters. (Note to self: chicken sweaters are real, and I’m officially too old and too cold to pretend they’re ridiculous.)
Five more quarts sealed. Ten total this week so far. If the power goes out tomorrow, at least we’ll have beans to barter with the chickens when society collapses into a frozen bean-fueled dystopia.
Stay warm, Dayton. Or don’t. Either way, the jars are full, the birds are fluffed, and the canner is still hotter than most dating lives in 2026.
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