In this Day 70 vlog of the "Building A Homestead in 100 Days" series, Victor Justin Rhodes and his homestead team confront a severe cold snap with temperatures at -4 °C. The wood boiler struggles to maintain heat, the propane valve freezes, and water lines risk solidifying, prompting a cascade of emergency measures. The crew troubleshoots the heating system, uses a heat gun to thaw pig nipple water, monitors a submersible pump, and resorts to hauling water from a creek for both humans and livestock. They discuss the challenges of frozen grain, the impact on livestock care (feeding pigs, milking cows, warming water for washing), and reflect on broader infrastructure vulnerabilities, likening their situation to the Texas power crisis. Amid the technical scramble, they maintain a light‑hearted tone, noting the upcoming Christmas holiday, sharing morale‑boosting moments, and promoting a free 10‑part homesteading crash course linked in the description. The vlog blends practical problem‑solving with community storytelling, illustrating resilience and preparedness on a remote homestead during extreme weather.
Chapters
It's -4 degrees outside. Thought I had problems yesterday. Today, major problems. At least two. The water is completely frozen somewhere. The wood boiler isn't keeping up. This is set to 74 in here. 64. If something's wrong with the wood boiler, I feel like I needed to get that going just to get ahead of things. It's serious. Honestly, I thought it was a little extra that we were gathering this wood up here in case the wood boiler didn't go, but I'm glad we have this redundancy here. Also, I thought I heard farmhouse heat trying to kick in, and it feels like I heard it choke. This is the pre-chore emergency assessment. Walk-in freezer seems to do okay, tries to keep it at zero.
It's -4. I guess it doesn't have to work too hard. 0% pressure in this house. Furnace is running, so that's good.
That means it's working. Now I think I'm okay as long as the wood boiler is working. I understand if it might not be able to keep it up. It's -4. I don't hear it blowing. It shouldn't be blowing.
Refill.
Fire out. I stacked this fool right before we went to bed.
Apparently that wasn't enough on a cold day like today. Just loaded it with a little bit of kindling.
There was coals, it should light.
In case it doesn't, I'm going to do this propane, and it is completely—
I can't open the propane because it's frozen.
All right, let's go get some good old-fashioned paper and a match.
It's gonna be key warming up periodically. Yesterday I tried to just do everything at once And looking back, I think it was a mistake doing everything at once. Took a lot longer than I was thinking, and it became quite miserable. Although I want to hurry and get this problem remedied, hands freezing off are going to be even a more major problem. So kids are still fast asleep. Uh, 7:15. We're normally starting by 7:00 easy. I'm not waking them up. It's so cold, there's no use. And it's probably gonna be a pretty rough morning. With the water temp of that at the base getting down to 85, I do wonder, has it gotten so low that the water lines of the wood boiler would freeze? Oh my gosh, I hope not.
See the exposed water line?
You don't worry about that freezing because, well, it's probably 150+ degrees water in there.
This starts out at 185 here, but with the 85, how cool does it get before it hits over there? Gone up 4 degrees now. Stirring. It's working. Don't you need the fire starter stuff? There was enough coals there. Pump's still hot. The water lines are warm.
I don't think the lines froze.
The animals seem fine. Submersible's working. There's not an ounce of ice on this thing. It's keeping it unfrozen. Power stayed on last night. It actually worked. Did it keep the pig nipple water unfrozen? No, I can tell you that right now. We got the heat gun. We'll do that once, twice, three times today probably. If you're like me, and last night as we started to lose water pressure and I was doing everything I could, it took me a while to realize, oh wait a minute, the livestock water. We can go up and get some water for ourselves to drink at Grandma's, take a bath, whatever up there. What about the livestock? Yeah, we're gonna do that the old-fashioned way too, and we're gonna have to get an old bucket and haul water from the creek. Wonder how nature keeps its water unfrozen? Keeps it moving.
Look how they dig a little nest in this corner. Dug it out so they had this sidewall blocking them, and then it's been dug out so they have that area blocking them. And of course they lay all together, stay warm.
Wow, I never know when we get that close.
Another mistake I made yesterday is I didn't eat because I didn't think it was going to take so long. Normally I'm a little hungry after chores. Yesterday it was a lot of hungry because it was like after 10. We don't know how long it's gonna take. Let's eat. Rebecca making some plans with Grandma. Is her water still going? I'm assuming it is. Her water's still going strong. This is kind of like what happened in Texas this morning. The humanitarian crisis in Texas is accelerating. Millions still without power or water. Was it last year or the year before where they got that crazy cold weather? And of course they didn't have the infrastructure for it because it never gets that cold. It's kind of like here, our water lines are not buried like if we were living in Minnesota, but now we have Minnesota weather. All right, back to problem solving mode. I got frozen grain in the bottom of this. It's gonna flush our toilets. Is that a problem? Will fall out in the house. Frozen right now, it's not coming off now. Try to see if we got some buckets without grain in them. Grain, drop off a grain. Can I grab a shovel, scrape it out? It's worth a try.
I got one bucket at least.
Too hot.
The feed room, you're too hot. This is too hot. Good morning, Jonah. Good morning. What problems have you ran into?
That ice, the pickaxe had a hard time breaking it.
Okay, let's pull that out and dump it out. Where are we gonna get water? Oh well, we're gonna haul water from the creek.
I'm just gonna leave it and let it be as much as I can.
Gotta pour water on top of it. They're gonna need more water. Yeah, it's gonna be some hauling. It's gonna be hauling to the creek. Happy day, Josiah. I said happy day. Hey, is that working, the heat gun? Yeah, it thawed out their nipple. Has anybody drank? Okay, high today is only going to be 24. Looks like the sun's going to come out though. What'd you find? Oh, okay. Is that all the way covered? Let's put some more water on it. That's great, Jonah. You remembered we had that submersible.
Because we couldn't get it even to heat up to 120 in warm weather. So in cold weather, will not heat up to very hot.
Good call. Tomorrow is Christmas, so happy Christmas everybody. I know you're seeing this after Christmas, but did you know there are 12 Days of Christmas starting December 25th? But for us, tomorrow is Christmas Day. Everything we do like that gives us more celebration and rest tomorrow on Christmas Day. We figured out the electricity, we're kind of getting our bucket water system going, we're gonna get some drinking water in town today. Time out, Lily wanted to show me something up about the pond. Did it freeze yet?
Yeah.
Enough for ice skating? I don't know. You gotta have longevity.
Isn't 12 hours long?
Yeah, but I don't know if it's long enough. What? Wow, look at how the waterfall has frozen. How cool.
White stuff is not that strong because there's barely any water.
Okay. Oh wow, got about an inch of ice. Whoa, not quite ready yet. Listen.
Okay, that's good. I think I actually hear the heat pump going at the farmhouse. Let's double check.
Heat pump's going.
All right, let's see if it's warm inside.
Warm, real warm. One less problem, one less problem. We're getting the pigs mucho hay. Look at them eating it. Come on, don't act like you don't like it. Should I keep warm or should I eat? Hey, which would you rather do on a cold day like today, get warm or eat? Well, now that's a pile of pigs. Now I know in all my years of vlogging, 6, 7, going on 7 years, we have never froze a camera like this. So this has got to be a record temp for us, at least while I was homesteading. Hey, you think this is not working? Don't tell me this merch will not work.
I guess it's working.
Check the outlet, please. How can we check this? Okay, that sun's gonna be our saving grace. It could be cloudy, y'all. Could be snowing. Okay, drop cord's working. So if that thing's broke, there's nothing we can do about it, but we do have power to it. Shall we go warm up and then milk?
Yeah.
Another interesting problem, we're gonna have no—
we have no warm water for the washing of the cow. Sure, we can warm some water up on the stove. We'll get some wood stove, but we don't have it yet, so we can't wash the cow.
So we're just gonna milk for the pigs today. Tomorrow we'll be more set up with some warm water.
Come on out, honey. That's gonna be a problem. We've got this weird phenomenon. She wants to swing to the right, which is where we need to milk. No matter where you put this She wants to go 45 degrees. Watch her natural inclination, just keep wanting to go this way. See, see, what are we doing? What are we doing? All right, yeah, that submersible is working. I see bubbles coming off of it. Now, is he gonna thaw out 4-inch ice? I don't know. Hope it'll keep it from freezing over again though. Surprisingly, although we have worse problems today, going a lot smoother. I think it's because we don't have that crazy wind. Drinking water coming up soon. Boy started it already. I wonder why I didn't leave it going. Let's go, get buckled in. We're back, Winnie. Make sure you get your breakfast. All right, you guys, you're gonna go warm up the pig nipples? Yeah, good deal. How was lunch? Boy, we're just limping by using paper towels. Rebecca spoke with somebody on Instagram today. He's like, I don't know how you guys live up there.
I know.
Well, the difference is we're prepared.
No, we just don't—
we— their water lines are deep.
I don't think our water lines are even deep enough for this type of weather. It's so insanely cold, which it'll be back to normal Monday. Actually, tomorrow it's supposed to get to 31.
What?
That's our Christmas present from Mother Nature.
One more degree to thaw out whatever it is, and then we can find out what a mess we got on our hands.
Yeah, Merry Christmas Hey everybody, I've got a little present for you guys. Link in the description. I think it's a 10-part crash course to homesteading. It's a crash course to homesteading. I figured— forget how many parts there are, but we cover gardening, cows, pigs, permaculture design, the whole shebang. It's free, you just give in your email list.
