15 Winter Mistakes Homesteaders Make (I’ve Made Them All)

0:00 Do you know what this tool is?

0:02 If not, you want to.

0:03 This is your water man shut off.

0:04 So, if you have a burst pipe during the middle of a frost storm, hello Bella.

0:08 Would you like to be in this video?

0:10 My donkeys, who are also part-time plumbers,

0:13 want you to know where your tool is,

0:15 where your water shut off is, and far more important to them,

0:18 where their snacks are before the frost.

0:24 I made this video because too many times I've gotten myself

0:28 caught in the cold and ended up having to do tons

0:30 of projects that I didn't have the time or the money

0:33 to do and they were emergencies so we still had to do them.

0:37 And I don't want that for you.

0:39 And so here's my checklist that I've made after several years of screwing

0:44 something up every winter storm because I forgot to do something important.

0:50 Whether you're a farmer or a house owner,

0:52 the single greatest gift I gave myself when it comes to winter prep a few years

0:56 ago was swapping out all of my outdoor

0:58 hose bibs to these frostfree automatic depressurizing hose bibs.

1:04 It is a major pain to not have water because your pipes freeze,

1:08 but it's an even bigger pain to have

1:10 your pipes burst because you forgot to winterize your pipes.

1:14 So, this is well worth the time and financial

1:16 investment on every single one of your outdoor hose bibs.

1:20 There we are.

1:21 We're back in water.

1:22 And even though these do most of the work for us,

1:25 there's still a few more components that I

1:27 have to think about every time it freezes.

1:29 First, I want to open every connection point.

1:32 And a bonus tip is that if you can open

1:34 all those connection points and then leave them on an incline,

1:38 they'll usually drain most of the way out before the frost happens.

1:41 And that will save you having to buy a whole bunch of stuff

1:44 if you do in fact forget to do any of these steps.

1:48 Bella, are you sucking your tongue?

1:50 This is like the donkey version of sucking your thumb.

1:54 Most donkeys stop doing it when they're older,

1:56 but some do it for their whole lives.

1:58 And sweet 9-year-old Bella here still sucking her tum.

2:04 Earlier I asked if you knew what that water mane shut off

2:07 tool was and if you knew where the water mane shut off was.

2:11 And that's because in the middle of a storm I found out

2:14 the answer to both of those things the hard and very expensive way.

2:18 Prior to our first really, really,

2:20 really cold snap that we had while living in this house.

2:23 I didn't realize that the pipes behind this wall

2:26 are actually exposed to a lot of open air.

2:29 And when it gets really cold and you

2:32 have pipes running through your crawl space,

2:34 you might have your entire house's water system freeze like we did too.

2:39 But now that we know that that is a likely

2:41 recurring problem every time it gets really cold here, now we know to prep.

2:45 And we'll put blankets or towels around the pipes,

2:48 insulate them as best as we can, and then put an oil heater on an extension

2:52 cord down in that crawl space before the frost.

2:55 And that helps us to avoid those problems.

2:57 If it's going to get really cold

2:58 and you have plumbing running on your outside walls, a really easy thing to do,

3:02 aside from turning on your faucets so that they're just dripping a little bit,

3:06 which will keep water coming through the pipes,

3:09 you can also just open your cabinet doors and let

3:12 the heat from your house get to the pipes,

3:14 which will also help offset that cold.

3:17 A lot of times in winter storms,

3:19 it's not actually the freeze that's the problem.

3:22 It's the thaw.

3:23 And thinking about where all of that accumulated water is

3:27 actually going to go once it does thaw is very important.

3:32 Case in point, think about this little gutter situation here and how I

3:37 brilliantly thought to extend the spray zone of the water out that way.

3:42 And that's simply because when I watched

3:44 where the water was going in a rainstorm,

3:46 it was going directly into Lucy's little pig house here.

3:50 and that's why it was constantly wet

3:52 and we were constantly having to change the bedding.

3:55 That's one of those things it's like, well, duh,

3:57 but also not really duh for someone who didn't grow up

4:01 on a farm or grow up doing any of this stuff.

4:04 It's just like you find it out over time.

4:06 And well, yeah, this is a really easy fix to that.

4:10 And now Lucy doesn't have to be wet.

4:12 Although, for whatever reason,

4:13 she's no longer living in this house and she's moved into the tarps over there.

4:19 Lucy, last night I heard some rustling out

4:25 in my tarps and realized that Lucy the pig has

4:29 inexplicably moved out of her pig house and has

4:32 made herself a little nest in these old tarps.

4:35 Look at all this.

4:36 She's like come in and picked herself some hay bedding,

4:40 but that's not going to work.

4:41 So, we got to pick that up and get it out of the way here.

4:46 Most of us store things like chemicals

4:49 and paints and batteries and hand tools and things

4:53 in our garage that if we were to have

4:56 our garage freeze would actually be a disaster.

5:01 So, if you have an unheated garage,

5:04 definitely think about at least temporarily bringing that stuff

5:06 inside so you don't lose it and have to replace

5:09 it or put something like an oil heater in your garage

5:12 to temporarily heat the space during the cold snap.

5:16 Well, hello there.

5:18 Fancy seeing you here.

5:20 And it's actually because my garage and my barn are both

5:24 unheated that this year to avoid frozen batteries and frozen paints

5:29 and chemicals and to have a place to put my plants

5:33 that need to not freeze but stay outside most of the time.

5:36 I built this little insulated closet thing in my barn.

5:39 And as you can see, it's not quite done yet.

5:42 But I have a little oil heater that is both safeer than other heating options

5:49 to heat something like a barn that's unmanaged

5:52 like this and also way more energy efficient.

5:55 And now I've got a little spot that I can bring all

5:58 that stuff into and store when there is a cold front a coming.

6:04 This is also the product of thinking about an emergency

6:07 situation where I would maybe need to have an animal

6:10 that needs to be brought inside and warmed up

6:12 and previously having no place to do that except our house.

6:17 So, this is a little room that was a long time coming

6:21 and you know still needs a little more work to get there.

6:25 There are two rules of livestock.

6:27 Livestock can be wet or they can be cold, but they can't be wet and cold.

6:33 Whoa.

6:34 Excuse me.

6:35 Don't let me get in your way.

6:38 And solutions for cold and dryness don't have to be expensive.

6:44 They can just be cheap or free.

6:51 Hey guys, come on.

6:52 Come on.

6:52 Come on.

6:52 Come on.

6:58 Hey buddies.

7:00 Oh my goodness.

7:02 You guys must be hungry, huh?

7:04 Hello.

7:06 Oh my goodness.

7:08 Here, butter.

7:09 Get some extra calories in you, girl.

7:13 Here you go, butter.

7:14 They staying warm out here.

7:17 Sorry, buddy.

7:20 No one ever wants to have to bury an animal that they care about,

7:24 especially if they possibly could have avoided having to do that.

7:29 And in 15 years of farming stuff, I've only ever lost two animals on my watch,

7:35 but both of them happened during a storm.

7:38 And since then, the lesson that I've

7:40 learned is that calories are so so important

7:46 in any kind of extreme cold because any

7:50 kind of parasite issue or underlying health issue

7:54 that the animal might have been dealing

7:56 with prior that wasn't super obvious before shows up

8:00 in a really big nasty way when they

8:02 also get chilled beyond what they can handle.

8:06 And it's actually in cold weather

8:09 that your mineral program is the most important.

8:14 One change that I've made that has made a huge impact on my animals

8:20 health is actually adding volcanic mineral clay to all of their minerals,

8:25 which not only helps them to absorb the minerals better,

8:28 which means we have to buy less minerals,

8:30 but it also actually binds toxins in their body.

8:34 Interesting side note, that salt is from an ancient sea salt deposit,

8:41 probably from the Jurassic area.

8:43 So, my cows are possibly licking

8:47 the same things that dinosaurs were once licking.

8:52 I also am pretty positive that most of my animals would end up as the first

8:57 to go if there was a dinosaur present because

9:01 very few of them have very good survival instincts.

9:06 As hard as I've worked to become an all

9:08 trades so that my life is as off-grid as possible,

9:12 it turns out that my life is still really on grid.

9:16 And when a major storm happens,

9:18 the biggest concern we have is what happens when the power goes out.

9:23 For us, absolutely nothing.

9:25 Because we have a Jackaryi Home Power 3600 Plus.

9:28 In the event of a power outage, we are still able to do our jobs,

9:34 which have a lot to do with computers, Wi-Fi routers,

9:37 and other things that can all be plugged into this.

9:40 And of course, we can never forget the most

9:42 important things like coffee and good news of great joy.

9:48 We can boil water, grind beans, make ourselves some ribs in the Insta Pot,

9:53 and also have some Christmas decor

9:55 going all simultaneously without worry of interruption.

9:59 It's almost like this is the jackeri

10:02 of all trades because not only is it high-powered,

10:05 well-built, and very, very versatile, it's also quite portable on wheels,

10:11 and I can pack it up and take it all over the farm with me.

10:14 Say we have a long power outage and I need to run the oil heater in the barn,

10:19 wheel it right down to do that.

10:20 I just want to highlight that move I did a second ago.

10:23 again when it is unplugged or the power suddenly goes out.

10:28 Nothing that's plugged into it gets unplugged or loses power.

10:32 And that's because it's an uninterruptible power supply,

10:35 which may not mean a lot if you're just making

10:38 coffee and rice and charging your devices at the same time.

10:42 But it means a whole lot when we are in the middle of a YouTube

10:45 live hanging out with all you fine folks and we suddenly lose power.

10:49 We don't have to lose our Wi-Fi connection, our computer connection,

10:52 or even Adam's fancy little light thing that he uses because of this.

10:58 Farmer Adam finds it especially cool that he can

11:01 use the app to remotely check the battery levels, change the unit settings,

11:06 and all kinds of other fun stuff that we're just going to leave to him.

11:10 We talk about frugality a lot on this channel, and in that vein,

11:13 these are definitely an investment, but they are a long-term investment.

11:18 They are made for the batteries to withstand over 6,000 charge cycles,

11:21 which is 10 years of use.

11:24 And even within a whole year of not remembering to charge it,

11:28 it will only lose about 5% of its battery life,

11:31 which is pretty dang good because major mom

11:34 brain is going on around here these days.

11:36 If you're interested in your own home battery backup system,

11:40 check out the link in the description.

11:41 A huge thank you to Jackary for sponsoring this channel and for making

11:46 making videos like this for you to watch at home for free possible.

11:50 Cheers.

11:51 Alexander, are you ready for some coffee?

11:55 This, my friends, is what it looks like to run a family business.

11:59 A lot of people have to learn in a really hard, painful,

12:03 very expensive way that heat lamps and extra bedding really don't mix.

12:07 It was Christmas Eve two years ago when we

12:09 got the call about our neighbor's barn being on fire.

12:12 And it was just because they had too much hay that got

12:15 pushed up against one of those metal heat lamps, started a fire,

12:20 and preciously their guardian dog went in and carried each one

12:26 of their goats out individually and saved almost their entire herd of goats.

12:31 but he actually ended up dying going in after the last three,

12:34 which you know was so heartbreaking for so many reasons.

12:37 Of course, there's the financial losses of the barn and replacing the animals,

12:42 but also the emotional losses of losing your barn and losing your animals

12:47 and also just thinking about the fact that I mean it took

12:50 me three years to train my livestock guardians to be the incredible guardians

12:55 that they now are and having to start that whole process over again.

12:59 I mean, every time I look at these guys now,

13:02 I just really see them in a different light.

13:05 So, to minimize our risk of barnfires, we've made a few huge changes.

13:10 First of all, we use pelletized pine bedding instead of straw or hay as bedding.

13:16 And that's simply because this stuff is just less flammable.

13:19 Also, it's really hard for a goat to push a whole bunch

13:22 of this up against a light in a way that would actually ignite a fire.

13:26 We also use ceramic heat lamps.

13:29 And while these are not going to eliminate your risk of fire,

13:32 they're going to drastically reduce it,

13:34 especially if you keep the area around them very clean.

13:37 You keep them clean.

13:39 So, every time we've got a storm coming,

13:41 we check the batteries in all of the smoke detectors in the barn.

13:44 We make sure our lights are cleaned off.

13:48 And every time these lights are plugged in, because our house is so far away

13:53 from our barn and we can't actually hear if there are smoke alarms going off,

13:59 we also use a long range baby monitor.

14:02 So, if this is plugged in, this is on and up at the house.

14:06 These things are also really handy when it comes to kidding season as well,

14:09 but that's a whole another story for another day.

14:13 If you have animals,

14:14 you need to be thinking about water because in cold weather,

14:18 your animals are going to be eating a lot more dry hay and other dry materials,

14:23 which is going to make them very, very thirsty.

14:25 And we have dairy cows.

14:27 A lactating cow will drink between 30 and 50

14:31 gallons of water a day in peak lactation.

14:34 If your pipes freeze or your hose bursts or there's

14:37 some other problem with your water delivery system for your animals.

14:41 Sorry, that's a bull.

14:42 We don't let him get too close.

14:43 Yeah.

14:43 Get out of here, buddy.

14:45 Come on.

14:45 You're going to be hauling buckets.

14:47 Our house is a quarter of a mile away from here.

14:49 A 5gallon bucket of water weighs 43 lb.

14:53 12 cows at 20 gallons of water a day is 240 gallons.

14:58 That is a lot of buckets.

15:00 and you're going to be hauling 1920 or 40.

15:05 I'm not very good at math, but a lot of pounds of water up and down

15:08 a very steep hill from a house that's very far away.

15:12 So, think about your backups.

15:14 And speaking of backups, we don't have power in this field.

15:18 So, I would love to have a trough heater that we

15:22 could just easily plug in, but we don't have that down here.

15:25 So, we have to use the next best thing, which is a freeze miser.

15:30 This is a fantastic option to keep your hoses and your pipes

15:33 from freezing cuz it keeps a little water running all the time.

15:37 But as you can see around me, a little water running all the time

15:41 will also turn into mud really, really quickly.

15:45 So, I have a backup plan for that as well.

15:47 In this case, it's going to be wood chips on top of wood chips on top

15:50 of wood chips to soak up this water until we can put that float valve back on.

15:55 This is now future Ann coming to you to show you that I have

15:59 put wood chips down to deal with as much of the mud as I could.

16:04 But this also gives me a chance to show off

16:06 my very shiny new trough that I just had the displeasure

16:10 of buying for $34 plus delivery fee because of an unfortunate

16:15 flamethrower incident when I was trying to defrost the old trough.

16:20 And that wasn't even the first unfortunate flamethrower mishap we've had.

16:26 Oops.

16:26 Oh, that was too much.

16:28 Sorry.

16:29 Too much.

16:30 Too much.

16:30 You just like annihilated that thing.

16:33 But at least we get to laugh about it now or something.

16:36 Cry about it maybe.

16:38 Anyway, the trough is great.

16:43 Here you go, dumbs.

16:46 Dumps.

16:48 In case you don't know this, when it snows or sleeps

16:50 and you have electric wire on top of a groundable surface,

16:54 it'll ground your whole fence out.

16:56 And we've talked about how Howdy here is really good at opening gates.

17:00 So, one time when all the electrical stuff around

17:04 here was grounded out because of a frozen fence line,

17:07 he licked this gate open and we ended up

17:10 on the police plotter because the donkeys were out on the highway.

17:17 And that was less than ideal.

17:18 How did you get him back?

17:20 Uh, well, he wasn't cooperating, so we had to actually carry him.

17:25 That was the real thing that was less than ideal.

17:27 But, I mean, you know, mercifully though,

17:30 it did cause a two-mile backup on the road.

17:34 It was at least funny for most of the people involved.

17:37 Not funny for me at the time.

17:39 Funny in retrospect, though.

17:41 If you use solar powered energizers for your fence or you

17:44 have solar lights outside or anything that is solar and battery powered,

17:49 it's really important to remember that this time of the year,

17:52 the sun is shining a lot less frequently.

17:54 And if it's been cloudy for several days before a big storm or a really,

17:58 really cold frost, your batteries might be really low.

18:02 And if they are, they're really susceptible to freezing and failing.

18:06 So in our case, that can mean that the hot fences are no longer hot.

18:10 our cows are out on the road or what it's

18:13 meant for me way too many times to count is

18:16 I'm replacing batteries or fuses or other things in my solar

18:20 powered farm items and that gets really expensive really quickly.

18:24 It seems logical to think that wherever there's water

18:27 and freezing temperatures that there is then going to be ice.

18:31 But I didn't really think about how that was going to apply

18:33 to gates freezing shut until one day I was trying to do chores

18:37 and I had to climb over the fence with buckets of water and handfuls

18:42 of hay and other things because I couldn't get this dang gate open.

18:45 So now when it's chore time and freezing temperatures,

18:48 I bring this handy dandy heat gun which has

18:50 helped me out of a whole lot of pickles.

18:52 Whether it be frozen gates, frozen barn doors,

18:55 frozen pipes, this thing comes in really handy.

18:58 And lest you think that I'm actually recommending that kind of latch,

19:02 this is the kind of latch I use on every other one of my gates.

19:06 I just haven't been able to replace that one yet.

19:09 But these things don't freeze very often,

19:12 and they're way easier to open and shut.

19:15 They also don't bounce open and let my animals

19:18 out accidentally nearly as often as that one does.

19:22 Hi, buddies.

19:23 What are you doing?

19:26 Anytime we're thinking about pests like mice coming

19:29 in, for those of us who have chickens and other livestock,

19:33 we also want to think about the fact that if

19:34 our animals are hungry and thirsty and we're protecting them,

19:38 what's the wildlife going to do?

19:39 And so in places like chicken coops,

19:42 these are our mobile chicken coops that have no floor.

19:45 Tunneling creatures are going to be a much bigger issue

19:47 during cold snaps because they're more desperate for food and water.

19:51 They know this is an easy source.

19:53 So, case in point, for my floorless chicken coops

19:58 like these, I have scrap pieces of plywood that are

20:00 just big enough to have a few inches outside

20:02 the coupe and a few inches inside the coupe.

20:05 It's not a perfect fail safe,

20:06 but it will at least discourage some of the less persistent tunnelers.

20:10 Winter is also the time that burrowing

20:12 creatures are most looking for easy snacks.

20:15 And that's why my more precious perennial root vegetables like rhubarb get

20:20 planted in pots that have a protective barrier around that gentle root system.

20:26 And to further protect them from the cold, then I come and bury them in mulch.

20:32 And then this basically creates natural insulation for the plants.

20:35 Rhubarb is kind of a bad example of something that needs insulation because

20:39 it's actually one of the few things

20:41 that really benefits from some cold hardiness.

20:45 However, you can see that there are pots around me.

20:47 There's all kinds of things getting mulched, fertilized, watered, etc.

20:53 And not surprisingly,

20:54 all of them survive the winter without me lifting a finger,

20:58 besides, of course, burying them and all that stuff.

21:00 So, yep, protect those plants.

21:04 If you have a tractor or other machine that runs on diesel fuel,

21:07 be aware that they don't like to start in the cold.

21:10 Oftentimes the oil gets too thick when it's cold outside and then

21:15 doesn't matter if you use glow plugs to get it started or not,

21:17 it just won't start.

21:18 We got caught one time where a semitr was waiting for us to unload stuff and it

21:23 took us 2 and 1/2 hours to get

21:25 the tractor started because I didn't know that then.

21:28 But now I know that if I'm going to have

21:29 to use my tractor the day after it freezes,

21:31 I put a germination mat on top of the oil pan

21:34 to keep the oil warm enough so that this actually starts.

21:38 Because it doesn't actually get super cold here very often,

21:44 I didn't learn this lesson until I had a really hard way to learn it.

21:48 And that was our house is up at the top of a really, really steep hill.

21:53 And on one particularly icy day, we couldn't get the car down the hill.

22:01 And so we ended up having to call our neighbors so

22:03 that I could take little Paul here to the emergency vet.

22:07 And you know, it was kind of an awkward phone call to ask

22:10 my neighbor if I could put my alpaca in their really nice car.

22:16 But thankfully Pauliey's okay and now we have a trauma bond with that neighbor.

22:21 But now, every time we're about to have a freeze,

22:25 I also remember to park my car at the bottom of the hill.

22:28 Polly, he's such a sweetheart.

22:31 I've been making videos on the internet long

22:33 enough to know that not only am I going

22:35 to get roasted in the comments section for all

22:37 these super obvious things that I didn't know,

22:41 but also probably for making light of losing money.

22:44 But my dad taught me something a really long

22:46 time ago that has served me very well in life.

22:48 And that's if it's already happened, you have two choices.

22:52 You can laugh about it or you can cry about it.

22:55 And laughing is a whole lot more fun.

22:57 Stay warm out there, friends.

22:58 If you want to see what it's like to do farm chores during a polar vortex,

23:03 check out this video.

23:04 I'll see you there.

23:05 Cheers.