The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Negative ten

Snowy hillside

I'm sure you're all sick of hearing about the weather, but cold continues to keep my interest, especially when I wake up to -10 degrees Fahrenheit.  That's frigid enough that I can only barely do my morning chores, and that the chickens don't even want to leave their warm roosts for fresh food and water.  I skip Lucy's walk, and only go out to see how frozen the creek is in the afternoon, when the sun has brought temperatures up to 22.

Creek crossing icebergs

We don't go outside to work when it's this cold, but there are projects that require our attention.  The most pressing is drinking water.  That line usually stays thawed even when the wash-water line freezes, but the drinking-water line froze up a week ago Monday.  Since then, we've been going through our stored water, and finally came to an end, just one day before Mom promised me five more cleaned-out milk jugs full of water.

Melted snow

The solution?  I tried melting snow, which is feasible, if time-consuming.  The three inches that fell Tuesday night are so fluffy, though, that each gallon only melts down into a single cup of water.  Instead, Mark had the bright idea of ladling out the gallon of water that settled in the bottom of our drinking water tank --- we could have poured it, but then would have had to let the sediment settle out again.

After tiding over our thirst, we turned back to sedentary tasks.  The great thing about a cold, snowy winter is that it gives me plenty of guilt-free time to write!



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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I love that last photo! I think I see the peach tree, root cellar and chicken coop. What a great view.
Comment by Brian Thu Jan 30 09:14:25 2014

Hi Anna and Mark,

Just so you know. The past several days I see old web pages when I first access your website.

I run Linux, so I can easily run different web browsers. When I first looked at your website today using qupzilla (latest), I see the webpage from 1-23-2014 ??!! When I look at it using Seamonkey 2.23 (latest), I see the pages you added today.

I am not sure who is doing what to your web image?

But I thought you would like to know that your ISP are modifying what they send or do not send to your users.

An interesting feature of qupzilla, probably worth your checking out, is that it allows you to easily see the various java script and other files "added" to what you publish. Their timestamps, etc.

Happiness is no longer being a Microsoft addict :).

warm regards to you both, John

Comment by John Thu Jan 30 09:31:28 2014

Are your drinking water lines insulated? It would be a good idea to do that if they are exposed...

Edith

Comment by Edith Thu Jan 30 13:35:24 2014





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