Water — Flowing and Frozen

Our battle with getting water to the cows continues.  For the moment, the freezing temperatures are winning and our water system is stopped up in a solid state.  Twice a day we do the water brigade.  The girls run buckets of water out and hand them over the fence to their Daddy.  He runs them the last bit over to the cows.  Christina, as a lactating cow, needs lots of water.

We have plans to modify our system so that even in the cold we'll have flowing water.  The first step was to get a real stock tank.  We'll cut a hole in the fence and slip it in between so the cows can drink from either side.  Then my husband will build a solar box around it to capture as much solar heat as possible, but we'll also run heat-tape along the pipes just in case.

It's such a hassle right now to keep the cows in water.  We're hoping this is a single season problem, one of the many things we'll get figured out and built this first year.  I have to remind myself that last winter we were walking water out to the chickens several times a day but now we only give them water once a week.  We got that figured out.  We'll get this figured out.

Grinding flour has become a new part of our routine.  Our youngest wanted in on the action.  His sisters got him a stool and he got some good cranks in.  The girls are becoming stronger and more efficient at grinding flour, as am I.  At first they could only go a minute or two, but now they can last upwards of five minutes.  If I leave the grinder set up and full of wheat when I go out to milk in the morning, it will be mostly finished when I come back in.  What good, strong girls!