As of this moment, Winter is officially kicking our butt. I had managed to maintain a sunny outlook on things, (even though there has been NO sun for a while now), utilizing an ‘attitude of gratitude’, as I drove to work in -12 degrees.
Frozen hot water pipes…
…glad we have a home with pipes to freeze.
Seriously, this only works for so long…
My Loving Spouse went straight to worry, which I cannot blame him. The guy has three metal joints in his body and the SUB ZERO temps are making him ache. The thought of burst pipes, cold spaces, and crawling around under a house was a tad terrifying. Luckily, he managed to thaw out the offending pipe, with fans and heaters and the bad British word. We now do what goes completely against my drought laden Californian roots, we leave hot water taps dripping.
For warmth, we are burning a lot of wood and the bedrooms are running a lot of electricity for heaters. We might have to sell the fatted calf next month to pay the electric bill, except beef prices are currently down. Speaking of cows…the animals frost-free pipes all froze last weekend. There was talk with Our Friend the Farmer about heat tapes, and other contraptions to thaw them out, but eventually we just had to get water to them the Californian way, which is why there is now 150 feet of garden hose in my beautiful claw foot tub. We cannot leave it anywhere else or it will freeze. We drag it out every other day to fill the animals water tanks and feed them lots of extra hay to help keep them warm. I wish all I had to do to keep warm was eat more!
My Sort-of-Smart phone’s weather app tantalizes us with reports of warmer weather in a few days time, then they change their mind when the days actually come. Tomorrow was said to be 25 degrees, we had planned to clean out the poop filled chicken house, so the hens would start laying again. Currently, we only have two hens laying and often by the time we get to the eggs, they are frozen. Now, the app is saying that it will only be 20 tomorrow and I bet by the time tomorrow comes it will be lower still.
When we go out to take care of the animals, we prioritize and do the most important jobs first, food and water…poop can wait, and since we are feeding everybody more, there is plenty of frozen poop. It is true, your nose hairs can freeze. I come back inside when my hands hurt too much from the cold.
We are planning on a bug reduced summer, as these temperatures apparently do them in. Now, that is a silver lining. As I write this, it is starting to snow, which is always pretty and it means, that things are warming up!
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
Stay warm my friends!
There has been talk at our house about coming to visit you. I think a Spring or Summer trip is the way to go after this post! I shivered just reading it! Praying for an early thaw!
I love that kind of talk!
Knowing you, you’d be a tad beyond cold.
We now have black ice and freezing rain. The highway has been closed all night and now school is on a 3 hour delay! I shall enjoy my extra 3 hours!
This brings back memories of growing up in Wisconsin on a small dairy farm. We had furious blizzards and bitter temperatures that lasted for weeks sometimes. It was very difficult so I can empathize with what you are going through. Spring and its life-giving rewards will be here soon!
Spring will be extra sweet this year!