Building a Homestead in 100 Days - Day 71

It's Christmas morning here. Hope you guys all had a great Christmas. There's still like 12 Days of Christmas, so technically till January 6th. Warming up out there, 12 degrees, feels like -2, but that's okay because yesterday it was -19. We still have zero water. It's not supposed to get above freezing until Tuesday. Today is Sunday. Eating up the skillet. This is not a tradition. It may sound like it. It's lamb shanks, but we just had them in there. Everybody's getting pick up burgers. Tonight though, the family's having traditional pizza for Christmas. What am I gonna do? Well, I'm gonna eat a variety of meats. Ribeye, salmon, and pork ribs. How does a carnivore have a special meal? For me, a variety. With no water, dishes were interesting last night. I got us some water at the grocery store. We went up to Grandma's house. Thankfully she's got water. We collected some dishwashing water, put one in a food service tray, rinse, scrub the dishes, then you pour that out, then you fill that up with warm water. Gotta heat up the warm water and then soap them and put them back somewhere. We put them in the dishes— I mean, sink. And then got to fill up that, uh, washtub with regular water to run everybody through again to rinse them. Okay, this is probably ready. Kind of want to be out there getting chores over with, solving all the problems we're going to have in this weather, or not have. We've been dealing with it for a couple days, and I think we're getting pretty good. That's what I want to hear, sizzle. I should have put oil down. Hey, did it, did it freeze over, the pond?

Yeah, we all were nice skating.

You were able to get on it?

Yeah.

Oh cool.

What are you doing?

You done your chores yet? No, no, I'm cooking lunch.

Kind of early.

Yeah, I know. We got to get it in the oven. Put it all in the Dutch oven with chicken broth, 300 for 4 hours. Did somebody load this? No, where's she at? Um, Gosh, it's already burnt down. Something's not working on it. The reaction chamber isn't getting as high as it's supposed to. I don't think it's burning efficiently. I think it's burning like a classic wood boiler and not double— double gasification. Is it actually coming out? Apparently we have water coming out of the spigot. It must just be stored up water in there. There's blockage between somewhere between us and the pump. Whoa, that's coming out of the spigot!

Yes!

Okay, this is strange. That's a good sign. Okay, go, uh, don't we have something we can fill up with it, or did you already fill up everything with it?

It was the system. Look in it.

Yeah, Jonah had a brilliant system. I thought he gravity-fed water from the pond overflow. And how'd that freeze?

Just started freezing.

Did you go look at the catchment? Something probably blocked it up or something.

No, I looked, nothing blocked it.

I wouldn't do that necessarily. You'll lose frozen air too. Yeah, this kid had a gravity flow water system working yesterday, and I thought it was gonna work. We had When we weren't using it, we had it going into the creek where it was going anyway. We have this overflow catchment from the pond. Yeah, water should have always been moving in this.

When I opened it up in one of the joints to fill—

open it? I wonder if that was it, if you closed it.

No, no, I unhooked it, just unscrewed it.

Oh, where? Thanks.

Close to the cows. I didn't have to, because if I ran it uphill—

oh, that was after it was frozen, or—

no, before.

Well, that might have done it. Probably lost your suction and water hung out in the line somewhere. Farmhouse. At least it's warm over here. It could be worse. We could have lost electricity. We could have also lost the internet. Nothing. Uh-oh, look at that! What the heck? This is good news. I gotta tell Rebecca something's frozen between here and our house then. Okay, that's crazy. Just told Rebecca she's about had it, ready to go to an Airbnb and get a bath. I don't blame her. Let's drip this. Well, that'd be a nice Christmas gift, wouldn't it? The water come back on. I have the water to our hydrant running just to hopefully, I don't know, wear ice down or something. This hydrant was froze the other day. I think it might be our culprit. Yeah, pretty sure it's frozen shut. That could be causing some problems, right? Lily has milk because I figured out some things with this water. I have some really bad news given that it's Christmas Day. We have pressure in our water tank again. Pressure is coming over from our system to our house. In a minute I'll show you what— it's gotten complicated when it then goes to our house. That's why we have water here at the hydrant, and we should keep in water here. So that's good. Now we have water for the livestock and we can stop going down to the creek. But Jonah's experiment— well, now there's those lines are frozen, but I just realized we could put them in the high tunnel. It's gonna heat up to a ripe 24. That's usually like record lows for us, but that's enough that the high tunnel will heat up. Did you get some parts?

Yeah, I think they're all the wrong sizes though.

Okay, come here. You got some stuff from Grandma? No, that looks like the right size. Oh wow, this is gonna do it.

She got all sorts of parts to us.

I think we'd be able to fix this. I've gotten this cut off. My only hope— this little piece here, it's going to be glued in. We don't have this piece, this piece that screws on. To the brass. There's no way we have that. This is probably glued. I'm sure it's glued. Big crack right here. Somehow we had this adapter and we do— we can't get that on. I need to trim it down a little bit more so I can get it all the way on. We're gonna have to just hope to God that doesn't leak. And that's enough. See the water spilt? I got our heat gun and we thawed out here in the corner, and sure enough, that's the only place where there was ice and Then there was ice in here and I was warming that up. This of course wouldn't shut because it was frozen. We freed up the ice in there and this still wouldn't shut and just water just gushed in here. We turned off the electricity to the pump, that started slowing it down. Jonah got me a little cup, a little measuring— it's like a little quart-sized measuring cup, and I just shoveled the water into the buckets as best I could. I guess water flowing through there loosened that up enough to where I could finally shut it. Just cut my elbow off. Thankfully Grandma had 1-inch elbows. This adapter It's the craziest story of all. This adapter is our only hope, and I literally just walked out here and there was a PVC something or another sitting right there on the ground. It was an adapter. Maybe there's a Christmas gift from the heavens.

Some gift.

Plumbers, I guess, left it on accident. Who knows? Let's try it. Dry run. This should work. Do you want to make that a hair shorter?

It's better to have margin like that.

Well, it might, it might make it sit a little weird here, but see this little gap? That can't be happening. That glue has got to hold it in there. Hey, before we do anything permanent, I'm going to turn the pump on. Can we try it without glue? Oh, oh, I would not step on the hide. Don't step on the hat. But you could turn them on. It shouldn't do anything over here. I have it shut off.

Okay, they're all on.

Okay, come over here. I'm just gonna hold this really tight. I'm not sure it's gonna work because of that crack. Let's try it. Let's just ease it into it. Nope, it's not gonna work.

Oh look, turn it on.

It's already leaking.

There's leaks somewhere else.

There's a leak in that.

Oh, and then look over here.

What? Oh wow, that's all cracked to pits. Okay, well we could fix that. We can't fix this.

No, we don't have another extension because if we cut that— oh, we can pull it down. There's space to pull it down. Our last hope for today.

Grandpa had We got some plumbing tape. This adapter piece is gonna be hard to get unless we go to the store. We still have the leak in the pipe, but we can fix that easy. All right, let's go. We don't have that piece. There's nothing we can do. Well, I wanted to get beautiful one a bath on Christmas. That's not gonna happen. We have that one part that— well, we can't— yeah, she did.

Yeah, now the gate looks like it's been through a hurricane.

Really? One problem to the next here at Christmas Day. Cows don't care if it's Christmas, do they?

No, they care about getting the hay first.

I gotta check in the house and then we're gonna have to clean up our mess. Lily, you have cleaned up in here. It looks amazing. We have water to both our other houses. This house lacks, and that's its only problem. I had an idea when I was showing beautiful one this that maybe we could— if it's just leaking a little, there's those boards there. We could open those boards up, catch it, and just empty that every couple of hours. I have messages to Seth Carpenter during our remodel. He doesn't have any 1-inch stuff. Mark, our mechanic, doesn't have any 1-inch stuff. Randolph might. And of course, we're using everything that Grandma and Grandpa had. I'm gonna take that, I'm gonna fix the PVC and fix the other leak in the straight line, and then I'm going to see if that leak's not bad enough, I can just catch it. I was actually looking around for a crowbar to lift up these boards to see if we can't put a bucket under there for the dripping. And I got to looking at this ice machine. Sure enough, they had a piece on here that looks like it, right? And sure enough, pulled this old one off and it's it. We're gonna have water. That looks like it's just gonna work. Why not? Unbelievable. I'm gonna fix this thing. To have our one adapter— this whole thing was ridden with cracks. I can rob the ice machine because we're not using it right now. It's winter. It's got this drain pipe I can just grab from that. We've replaced our cracked— seems to be working, Jonah. Get some pressure out of it. I don't want to fill it up, do I? Because yeah, we're gonna take apart to glue it.

When you take that off, that's gonna be explosive.

It's gonna bring all this water back in here. Okay, I'm gonna say it's gonna work. We're so close, and then we can't get the glue bottle open. But you're tightening it now. You're doing great. You're doing right. It's probably enough. You can get the rest by hand. I guess all we gotta do is put it on that one and we're good. I'm gonna hope for the best.

Now how long do you have to wait before you turn the water on?

I don't know, 5 minutes? I don't know. Did we do it? I don't see any leaks. Ah, shoot! What happened? There's a leak. We didn't cut this pipe far enough back.

What?

Whoa! Wow! What happened? That was our only male-to-male adapter and we didn't make this long enough. I didn't make that the whole way. Shoot. I only cut a foot. I feel like you told me that's all we needed.

I thought it was all we needed and I'm sorry. I know, but you're not the boss.

I didn't have to listen to you. Can we just cut this? Jonah, I think you made a good point. You said maybe it didn't crack, maybe it just became part of this seam. Did I even glue that, Jonah?

I don't think you did.

I might not have, but I bet what happened— there might still be some ice in the line, so there's going to be a lot of pressure trying to push it through. Let's give that 5 minutes. Hopefully we, we just forgot to glue that side. Let's try it again. Let's just let it— I'm just gonna barely crack it until— so far it's not leaking.

Do you hear that clicking noise?

Yeah, that's the water working, I think. Probably a good sign. I wonder if I should have you go upstairs and turn the water on. That would take some of the pressure out.

You're probably right because it's that water in the line. Well, let's go show it to Mama. Turn it on all the way and see what happens.

No, let it keep running like this. Let's go see if it's— if we have any water in the line. It's gonna be the best Christmas present Rebecca could ever want. Dishwasher working and a bath. Hey, Lily. Turn on the water for me, please. Let's see if it works. Look at that. Don't, don't, don't— we won't jump up and down yet. Keep it on, Lily. I'll take some pressure off of it. We're not leaking. What?

Hear that noise?

Oh, it's just the water running. Okay, it's wide open. Oh goody. All right, let's go celebrate. This door has to always be shut. We rigged that drop cord to go through the door. That was our problem. This door was cracked open, making the water pipe over there vulnerable. The furnace ain't keeping it warm enough in there, being the extreme temperatures it got down to. Try it.

All right, trying.

Oh, it didn't work.

It didn't. Not back here. Does your bathtub work? Yeah. Okay, is that working? Yeah, it's, it's limping, but it's, it's there. Next problem, these two stalls. Guess what? That's where all our water lines is, to mine and Beck's these back bathrooms. We're gonna run some space heaters back into here. I already see some vulnerabilities that can be improved, like, well, there's no insulation on that part of the wall. There's some insulation missing on the other side too. The water line comes right through there and looks like it might be insulated, and then it's in the insulation. This door needs to be shut every night when it's cold. We can get under this wall. Oh, you can right there. Let's get all this stuff out of the way. We got one of the submersibles for the water unplugged into this. Now we have this plugged in. We cut a hole through our wall. The strip is not turned on, probably. Now it should work. So far I hadn't tripped it. Just blew the fuse. All right, the fuse. Yeah, it's not gonna run two space heaters plus a submersible. I bet it blew the box fuse.

No, because it's working.

It's working now?

Yep, it blew that. It blew that, that outlet thing, that double thing.

What makes you think it won't blow it again?

There's only one on it.

How'd you turn the other one off? You unplugged it?

Yeah, instead of blow— it blew the strip.

Yeah, it blew the strip.

Okay, and then you just put the strip back on.

I don't think I have any more outlets to spare, do we? Because of those submersibles. Meanwhile, beautiful one has made all the kids French toast.

Not you.

No. Is that a, uh, Christmas tradition?

It was like French toast. Like we had French toast, but it's not even morning.

It's It's a little late, but we're learning to make our own rules, aren't we?

Exactly.

The lamb turned out good. How'd the French toast turn out?

Good.

Empty plate club. Take the little man on a walk. Hey Rebecca, we're vlogging, so we're working today. It's Christmas, right? Remember that vlog we watched the other day? It was so funny. It was a Christmas one.

Yep, from a long time.

And you're like, we were gonna go to the park and pick up trash. You just said it just so casually. Oh, we're just gonna edit the vlog and then go to the park. Yeah, it's Christmas Day. Yes, I'm gonna work on Christmas. I just said to the editor today because we're working out and putting up the video, and I was like, hey, are we the only ones working today besides the firemen and the hospital? Because they're working hard. Probably.

Justin's orthopedic surgeon said Christmas afternoon is when she works hard because they open all the orthopedic death traps in the morning, and then they get hurt on them and then go to the hospital.

My dad used to say to us on Saturdays when we would go work and we would cut wood and we'd be in town making our deliveries and we'd see everybody fooling around shopping, and he would say, are we the only ones working today? And it was a proud moment. A proud moment to all you who are working on Christmas. I'm proud of you. And that is what's gonna set you apart over time— being willing to work when nobody else is. And so when you really benefit, when you reap those rewards, don't let anybody shame you.

You know who else is working hard on Christmas?

Farmers, right?

Milk. All you homesteaders watching Well, like if they sell their dairy to a grocery store.

I'm talking to you.

Or they whatever.

I'm talking to all you, all you got up in the cold and took care of your animals. Don't let anybody— once you enjoy that and reap the benefits of that, it might be summer, it might be in 2 years— don't let anybody shame you, make you feel bad because you have nice things, because you have good things to eat, because you have fresh food. You put in the work. When nobody else was willing to. Good job. We're gonna check something because the water is no longer working at the houses. Actually, let's see if it's working in the old house. It's not working here anymore. I left this dripping. Why? Okay, you know what made me think— hey Becky, it's not working in here. Makes me wonder if that heat lamp went out. No, it's still— it's still light. It's light still going. Heat lamp's still on.

What do you think?

Did—

do you think that the well—

why, why did we have water?

Did— is the well turned off?

Let's go look. Oh my gosh, that could be it! That would be kind of crazy if we just turned the well off. We might have did that. Jonah might have did that when we were working on that because of the electric line there. That would be hilarious, but it would make total sense. Wow, okay, significantly warmer here. Uh, we got pressure here. There's pressure on it, so what does that mean? Oh wait, it's off. It's all off. All right, well, that was stupid. Okay, good sign. You can't get your shoes off fast enough.

I know, right?

Let's try it. Hot dog! Hey, let's check our bathroom. The back was never working, pump or no. Okay, go ahead. Still no heater. I hear something.

Some water just came out.

Listen. It's trying. See that smoke? We shouldn't have smoke from the wood boiler. The gasification isn't working right. I've yet to see it go to 1200, which is where it's supposed to go. I've seen 600, 700. Is that warmer? We couldn't put one on this side. It's on the other side.

I'm just looking to see what—

it's a bit warmer, but not warm enough. The heat had to go on that side. See if the heater's still working. The heater's still working?

No, the heater's not on.

Well, it's tripped then.

Okay, so we found that the pipe— I don't know if you can see right there, there's a pipe that goes there, it goes that way, and then it goes, it goes so it's exposed right here, and then it's exposed over here, then it goes like up into the insulation, so it's not exposed out here, but it is exposed like in these little areas. So I had bought some heat tape. Oh, what's the matter? As you can hear, we have one— Henry shared his RSV with me. So I had purchased the heat tape and Grandma picked it up. Justin didn't realize that there was a plug right there, and I knew that there was a plug there, so I said, what about this plug? Because we were gonna try to tap into maybe the brooder side. I bet it is frozen because he said the corners are bad for freezing, so hopefully I'm gonna have a bath tonight. If not, I might take one in the kids' room. Can you run? I can't see in that corner. Will you be able to get through that corner?

Yeah. I get it now. All you Yankees are saying, oh, when it gets to 24, that's balmy. I get it. I get it. I'm actually getting hot in this coat. It's gotten up to 24. When you're at single digits and -19 yesterday, I get it. Finish hanging this tape up. I can get that through. I'm getting the insulated part, but might as well line it too. I sound funny because I'm gonna put on a mask since I'm gonna have to mess with fiberglass. We're gonna have to get over that vent. I just noticed another vulnerability. It comes out right there. There's not even insulation for about 6 feet. I don't think our cord will reach that far, but maybe it'll warm it up enough, and maybe we'll get some insulation up in there. I mean, the water traveling along with it maybe will warm up. You can actually pull that insulation out. Can I get to it to the other side? I don't know, we're gonna have to bust through that plastic and reach through. Should we turn the power strip on? I meant to say heat strip. All right, it's working, huh? I don't know if it's working or not. Warming up? I think it's warming up. Let's check it in a minute. 1 minute 37 seconds later. It's been a minute. Let's see if that line's warmed up. I don't know how to know if it's on. Looks like there's a button on it. Feels warm.

Ah.

No, I have this one still in its package. Let's see, I have this one still in this package. We're not up in the air. Let's see if there's a— like, is that a shutoff? It's not a shutoff. You just plug it in and it works. It lights up, that's indication it works. It should be working. Oh, that's to sit against the pipe or something. This must get hot and it protects it from that. Okay, all right, we're good now. Is our space heater still going? We Blows every one of these fuses here. Really? It's blowing everything. Blew this little box. Bypass the box. That'll probably just blow the fuse.

Hey, Justin! Justin! Do we have water in our bathroom? Yeah, you fixed it. When you were—

well, that's—

I was wondering what you were doing more. Here you go, buddy. Is that interesting? I did the dishes. I never thought I'd be so excited to do dishes without buckets of water. Henry and I have been under the weather, as you can tell, as you can hear. I caught what I think was his RSV. We never went to the doctor because we didn't need to. We just treated it at home. He's doing better. It was a couple days of fever, just snotty nose, and now we've got a cough. Merry Christmas to us.

Okay, well, Rebecca had just called me. It's working. It's working. That tape worked fast, I reckon. It's been enough time to see if this is still going. It is. Oh my gosh, it is. She wants me to spend Christmas with her. I should probably get this covered up though real quick. Why are we missing insulation right there? I'm gonna put the one back in over the ductwork. We do have some here that we could take. We don't need it as bad there when we have line exposed out here. I hate to keep taking insulation from one area, so maybe I'll take it out of the middle right here. The water line's unfrozen. We got some heat tape on those pipes. And we got some insulation around it. I just don't know how to rest, do I? Let's go see if it's true. She says we have water. Oh! And I'm pretty sure I know how to prevent that from happening next time.

I think that what I want to do actually is the inner stalls downstairs in the basement. I want— I would like to insulate and have the wood boiler heat that area so that it can be a workshop in the winter.

That's not a terrible idea.

Because The hallway will continue to go through.

Mm-hmm.

So we'll have doors coming into this side of the thing, which will be house, like our house. And then on that side of the hallway will be a workshop.

Wow, and that water's coming on strong. I know. What are you making?

I'm making grain-free pizza. Are you gonna have pizza? No, you're gonna have pizza.

How close were you to losing it and going to an Airbnb?

Very close.

You were shopping, weren't you? Did you find any?

I actually did find some that you could book on Christmas.

Cool. You think their water lines are busted? Because Mark had a busted water line.

I don't think they were.

You have to heat that water up. You just put 170-degree water in there. Henry's in heaven. I think it's the first time discovering this drawer.

Yeah.

Hey dude, let me see your hockey stick. Did you make that or Jonah make that?

I made it.

You made it? Cool. Can you play on the pond? No. Oh no, why not? Still not strong enough? Tomorrow morning is the morning.

Well, we played on it.

It'll be your last chance because it starts warming up Tuesday.

Played on it this morning and then we went and got on again.

I got some fish coming on. They've got some pizza in the oven and a ribeye. Totally forgot to do my ribs though, but I'm still getting excited. Look at this, you break out the holiday booties for the kids. Yay! You know, even though we had that problem, we sorted through it and it feels good to have worked through problems. We got our water back going. We would have a big flood down there. I haven't seen that. So happy. We're so happy for this Christmas dinner.