Two Is One and One is Frozen Water

We got bit by the “two is one and one is none” rule yesterday morning—the heated base underneath the chicken waterer decided to die. The husband had already repaired it once. I think it is beyond redemption. (Yes, that is snow in the background.)

Of course, the farm store was sold out of heater bases. I ordered one from Amazon, but it won’t be here for a week. I texted Elysian to see if she had an extra she wasn’t using. She didn’t, but she had a submersible heater that she loaned us to use in the meantime.

While I was at the farm store, I picked up an additional submersible heater for the pigs’ water tank. During the summer, they drink from nipples mounted on the outside of the shelter. The husband had to disconnect the water line to the nipples, though, because overnight temps have been below freezing. The water tank is now their main source of water.

The pigs go to freezer camp on November 10, so we only have to deal with these issues for another couple of weeks. If we wanted to keep pigs year-round, we’d have to build a barn.

I was able to get all my errands done yesterday and then spent some time preparing for this impending storm. I am subscribed to our local NBC station’s weather alerts, which is helpful but sometimes disconcerting when a disembodied voice breaks the silence and announces, loudly, that “A winter storm warning has been issued for your location!” I’ve been watching the Spokane news station as well. They are expecting 3-6” of snow there. The question is whether the storm hits Spokane and then dives south, in which case, Missoula will get hit worse than we will.

The husband has decided to hang around here today. He wouldn’t be able to get much done anyway as the snow is supposed to start around noon.

I’ve got the next batch of tomatoes cooking down. I don’t think it will be as big a run—20 quarts, maybe?—but it’s forward progress.

We had the last of the lettuce in our salad the other night:

This came from a tray of plants in the greenhouse. I can tell they’re not getting enough light anymore, and if we want to keep them from freezing, we’d have to make sure the propane heater is on every night. I’m going to feed what’s left to the chickens. It’s time to start investigating a winter growing setup. I am leaning toward a Kratky system—both Nicole Sauce at Living Free in Tennessee and Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast have implemented this system and rave about it. We have room for something like it out in the old garage, which is far easier to get to in the winter than the greenhouse.