The line from the creek pump to the wash water tank finally thawed out last week.  We thought it was still frozen at first, but a failure to follow protocol led to fortuitous results just this once.

We turn on the pump at the electric box outside the trailer.  The rule is to leave the lid open when the pump is running so we'll notice and turn it off a couple of hours later.  But when we tested the pump Friday, we forgot to open the lid.  So when the pump didn't seem able to push the ice up the hill, we forgot to turn it off.

Half an hour later, I noticed water spewing out of the line.  We opened the electric box lid as a reminder and soon had a thousand gallons of wash water on hand.  No more pumping water out of the well and into the tank!  Yet another sign that spring is coming to the farm.

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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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