Everything Is Wet

Hello friends!

Well, we got a decent amount of snow recently, about 18 inches in total, so not as bad as some places, but enough to be enough. It was funny, it managed to snow pretty much only on days where I had to work on outside projects or be out in town. Funny how that is.

It also got down to about -7°. That’s Fahrenheit. For my Celsius using friends, that’s somewhere Around -21°. That is, regardless of how you label it, really freaking cold. 

That’s painfully cold. The ponies’ whiskers froze. Understandably, they hardly left the barn. I really can’t blame them, I hardly left my room unless I was grabbing food or hugging ponies. Watson has exclusively lived under blankets. He grumbles if you get up and move the blanket, grumbles if the heater is turned down, it’s hard to be small when it’s cold. It’s really hard to be small when there’s 18 inches of snow in your backyard. He misjudged how deep it was off the step, jumped in the snow, and just got so mad. Day ruiner. We got him inside all warm and dry, he survived. 

In other news, we’ve had more plumbing shenanigans on the farm. I am so over major repair bills. But it is what it is. I called a different plumber from last time, for those concerned. It was a better experience, but I really hope I just don’t have to call any more plumbers for a while. 

I walked down to the corral on my lunch break, a daily occurrence, and I noticed a river where there wasn’t one before. Curious, since I hadn’t planned to run a river through my arena. A little investigation later, I found where the water was bubbling up from the ground. Turns out the water line from the house to the horse trough gave up the ghost on me. To be honest, I thought it ran a different way, so I was so confused as to the location of the spout. So, that was a learning experience. 

Another thing I learned is that apparently whoever put in all these pipes originally thought shut off valves were optional. So, the only way to turn off the water was to turn off the pump for the whole farm. That obviously wasn’t going to work, especially not in negative degrees, so, well, we built an ice rink instead. Not ideal. 

I felt so bad for the first plumber that came out that evening, he looked at it, quoted the project for me, and set the fix for the next day. Then he spent about an hour trying to get his truck and trailer up my snowy driveway. There were a few moments where I thought he was going to need to leave the trailer here. Or that the trailer was going to drag Him down the bank into my pasture. But he eventually got it.

The next set of guys, the following morning, slid down the driveway with their own trailer, and they broke one of their chains too. Then when the second truck came, also got mildly stuck, and then left. Then the third one came with the excavator, it dropped off the excavator, and then fought to climb back out. 

At this point my incredibly sweet neighbor, realizing that I still haven’t managed to procure a blade of my own, fired up his adorable little backhoe and came and scraped some of the driveway for me. I really appreciated it.

That said, it took them two days to fix the pipe, and unfortunately they still struggled to get up the driveway so the excavator and the utility trailer stayed over until the temps rose enough. 

I am super appreciative that they were able to fix it for me in the snow and everything. Weirdly enough, the pipe didn’t freeze and crack, it didn’t freeze at all, it appears to have just worn through, water pressure or something just wore out a hole. I have no idea. This home ownership shenanigans is hard.

But, otherwise, guys, I’m so excited! My sweet grandma called me up and asked me to stop by one Saturday before bible study. She had something she wanted to give me. Turns out she had purchased a whole cow for butchering and split it up amongst all her family. She gave me about one hundred pounds of meat! She says it’s a christmas gift, she’s being so generous, and I am so grateful! That meat will last us well into summer, and will help tremendously with the grocery bill. It’s always great to have a stocked pantry, such a good feeling. I still want to build a bit of a store room of dry goods over time, but the freezer is stocked for now and I am so pleased!

So that’s been most of what’s new here. Not much due to the weather and the latest repair. As the spring rolls in closer and closer, these updates will hopefully start turning to things like planting and sunshine and flowers and such. I’m really really ready for spring. 

Until we chat again my friends!