Today is the fourth day that the United States Postal Service is refusing to deliver mail to my mailbox. Any mail. No tracks at all in the snow, not even to the neighbors mailboxes.
It’s also the second day that I have no running water. Again. In the past, it’s been a lack of electricity that turns the heaters off causing the pipes to freeze. A 14-1/5 hour power outage and circuit breakers popping to be particular. This time, all circuit breakers are on, and all heaters (two pipe heaters on the pipes, one magnetic oil-pan heater on the bottom of the brand-new pressure tank, and a 750 watt utility heater) are on. The pump-house is very warm, well* above freezing and all pipes below the pump-house are buried 5 feet deep, so I’ve been told.
It’s the… I don’t even know how many days I have been keeping the second chicken waterer in the house and switching it out with the one in the coop. I do know, that last year I did not have that problem. I never had frozen water in the chicken waterer last year, not a single time.
I also keep a utility heater in the laundry room. Because of that, and the fact that this winter I have more laying hens, I keep the eggs in there. ALL the eggs froze yesterday. Two dozen eggs in mashed paper egg boxes froze, right above the utility heater.
I took preventative measures this fall to avoid every single problem I’m having. Not one of them prevented any of the problems I wanted to avoid. Not a single one.
*Pun intended.
