Happy Twelfth Night!

I was just looking at A Polar Bear's Tale and saw that it was Twelfth Night tonight. While I am sure you all are baking your bean cakes and mulling your wassail to howl at your apple trees,  I am not.
Instead I am working to finish up a kiln full of ware to fire during a cold snap of below zero weather that is supposed to come in a day or two. 
There is nothing nicer than a kiln to warm the basement and pipes during a frigid spell! I might just make some mulled cider to drink while it fires, though.

Since much of the Midwest US is getting hit by a snowstorm, I thought I would post pics I took while I took care of the animals early in the morning, just after the first big snow we had a couple weeks ago.
Happy Twelfth Night!

Down the pasture to the woods

Jaxon's first snow

Looking back up the pasture to the house

Along the neighbor's pasture fence

Into the woods

A bunny path in the woods

Old wild rose thicket in the woods

The rabbits, chickens, small hoop greenhouse and heritage piggies. 

Twerk Your Turkey

Whoa, Winter!

I just posted the autumn photos a few hours ago, but this is how it looks outside now:

Autumn Mornings

I took this photo at dawn in early October

 And this one last week at sunset:

Autumn is passing and winter will be here soon. 

Tornado!

A tornado producing storm system hit our area yesterday, and power was out for about 5 or 6 hours.

The main part of the storm and an actual tornado hit about two miles away in Bellevue. We had very little damage at our place- Just a few big branches down, and I had to reset the breakers when lightning struck the house. The lightning killed one of our fans, but that was it.

I believe Bellevue is still without power, though, and they had tons of storm damage.

Truck

Every farm needs a truck.

I found a local one on Craigslist for 800.00.

I love it!  It sits 6 people comfortably, and looks like it could fit 8 without too much trouble.

 And its big.  I've already used it to carry some lumber we needed to make repairs. I feel like a real farm woman now.

Oh, and we have hot water! Billy felt bad that we were going to have to wait a week for hot water, so he came yesterday and installed a hot water heater. HOT SHOWERS FOR EVERYONE! Or at least 50 gallons worth!

We have a well!!

Remember how I said we didn't have water? And the cisterns needed an inspection before we could get them worked on and filled?
I got hold of the inspector today, and he is over a month backlogged.

Hidden rainwater cistern

Well, the handyman, Billy, came out this morning and was going to see if he could rig up a pump for the rainwater cistern, since he looked into it and it didn't have floating dead birds or anything. He thought that if we dumped some bleach in it and let it air out until the chlorine had evaporated, then put a filter on the line we might be able to use the water to bathe in, if we were careful not to ingest it in any way.

Well with lid

 While he was over looking in the cisterns and trying to figure them out, a neighbor came over and pointed at the big access thing that leads to what we thought was the main cistern, one where you have the water delivered by truck.

This  thing has a very very heavy handmade wooden lid with shingles on it. It had been too heavy for Billy and I to lift, so he had accessed the cistern by the other, smaller hole about 7 feet to one side of the very heavy lidded hole.

Cistern access

The neighbor told us that the lidded hole didn't cover the other side of the cistern, but instead it covered an old well. The three of us were able to get the lid off, and sure enough there was a deep, dark hole. Billy spent the day rigging up the pump and piping to bring the water into the house.       

There was a pipe into the side of the well that lead to the basement, so that was great! The neighbor wasn't sure why the well had been abandoned. He thought it went dry a lot, though. However, we have had a very wet summer, so right now there is plenty of water.  Billy put a couple of filters in the  lines and told us to run the water into the tub until it looked fresh.  We did, and the water ran stinky and sulphur smelling for a LOOONG TIME. 

While we won't be drinking the water until the well gets tested, we feel OK using it for bathing. After Billy left, we all took very cold showers.  They were frosty cold, but totally worth it to feel clean for the first time in almost a week. The hot water heater should be installed next week. I'm sure it will feel like we are in the lap of luxury when we can have a warm shower!