Winter Weather

We had another storm blow through this weekend. It started Friday and dropped a considerable amount of snow. I don’t think it was the seven inches they were predicting but it was enough to make life difficult.

Of course we had issues with the automatic waterer. This fall the insulation broke and fell on the float valve make the waterer overflow. Mike pulled the insulation and that was the end of it. Until Friday night when the weatherman was talking below zero temps for highs on Friday and almost thirty below temps for Saturday night! Umm, Houston, we have a problem.

I tried my best to at least insulate the one side so that it wouldn’t freeze over completely. As it was, the horses could barely get their nose into the water and if they had a big nose, I’m not sure that they could. So I broke open the water and hoped that it wouldn’t freeze. Mike went out Saturday after a huge “discussion” on that this is an emergency! Apparently emergency in my world is different than emergency in his world. If I don’t have an automatic waterer, I would be dragging the hose out every day and filling a 100 gallon tank and praying that the horses don’t drink through 100 gallons in a day. The four in the other pen drink through enough that I fill the tank every other day to be on the safe side. So yes, I consider it an emergency!

Mike did fix the waterer Saturday but set the temp too high so now the water is warm. Not a bad thing but it’s going to jack the price of electricity up. I’m going to look at using a propane heater instead of electric next winter. But I’ll need to budget for it.

I blanketed those that had blankets but didn’t stall any because they had the round bales and could get out of the wind. I wasn’t happy about it but wasn’t exactly sure what else to do. Having a round bale in front of them is better than having a portion of hay that they’d probably burn through before I could get out the next morning. But everyone seemed ok Sunday morning. No worse for wear. I’d thrown extra alfalfa to keep them going and they all seemed rather content.

The weather is supposed to warm up and be above freezing for the rest of the week. I didn’t fill the mares’ water Sunday knowing that there was no way I’d be able to get the hoses  out, water run, tank filled, and water drained out of the hose before it froze over again. Hopefully tonight the temps will be warmer so I can get the tank filled without having to worry.

I’m guessing the blog and Facebook will be fairly quiet this week. I’ve been in a foul mood lately and I don’t want to ruin anyone’s holiday cheer. I’ve been looking at things that need to be done and nothing is getting done. Some of which I have no control over and some of it I simply can’t do and that irritates me when I see someone sitting, doing nothing when there’s work to be done. So, yeah, I’m grumpy after dealing with that for MONTHS. But that’s for another venting post. But for now, we are coming through this cold snap no worse for wear. My nerves are shot but everyone else seems to be doing ok.