March 3, 2021

Oh boy! Winter kicked us hard!! The temperature dropped to negative 19 degrees, dropping a lot of snow and freezing our water pipes underground. We were scheduled for our rough-in inspection on the house but Greene County gave us another month since it was so dangerously cold. After a few days below freezing, the tankless hot water heater in our loft apartment froze and busted the copper pipes. Almost every day we had to drive to the nearest convenience store to fill a bunch of 5 gallon buckets with water, bring them home and carry them upstairs so we could water the young seedlings in our nursery, wash dishes, sponge bathe, flush toilets, make coffee and, well, you get the picture.

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It was so cold, the ground next to the apartment froze and expanded lifting the concrete walkway 5 inches. The uneven slippery ground made it very difficult carrying the filled water buckets to the apartment.

On the upside, the post office was not shipping livestock and the chicken breeders could not send their newly hatched chicks out to their customers. This caused the local hatcheries to sell their chicks dirt cheap to anyone who was able to come get them. We took advantage of the situation and loaded up on both meat and egg laying birds – 92 birds in all. But then we had to keep them in our little apartment until it was warm enough for them to go outside. We will add the layer hens to our flock and process the meat birds in April.

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The weather warmed up enough for the building inspector came out in early March. He seemed quite impressed with our work. He showed us 10 things to correct before he could pass us. Since these were all easy things, we decided to take time off the house and work on more pressing farm matters, like fixing our busted water line and get water to the house and apartment. We knew we had a busted pipe – all the ice was gone and we still had no water. Eventually the standing water in the yard dried up except for 2 locations. There was one spot in the back yard between the house and apartment and one spot by the chicken coup where there is an outside water hydrant.

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We dug and dug and dug in both areas until we found the 2 brakes. Doing the work in the evening after my regular job meant digging in ice cold mud at midnight. Katie showed me the perfect picture of the life of a farmer in spring.
We were able to patch the main pipe to the apartment and house but had to disconnect the water to the yard.
Katie contacted the hot water heater manufacturer and they said our unit was still under warranty and sent us a replacement.

Finally, we have running water in our living quarters and hot water – big smiles and sighs of relief.
By the way, in case we did not tell you earlier, Katie wired the tankless hot water heater all by herself. She is my hero.