Monday, January 17, 2011

Choppin' Ice

So last week there were a couple of days that were bitterly cold. Where we woke up to -2 and 0 degree mornings...

Needless to say I made a pot of coffee ever morning last week and boy did I need it.

But anyways back to the cold temps...

When you have cattle one thing you have to think about when it gets below freezing is how the are going to get water to drink...

And generally this means choppin' some ice...


And the best thing for chopin' ice is an ax...


If you don't have one you might as well head to the store and get one, cause you need it...


Especially when the temps get really low, cause that ice is thick! 

This spell was cold enough it froze almost every one of our creeks as well...

We had one that had a couple of spots that were running enough to stay open, but just barely...


Usually Caleb brags about not havin' to chop much ice in all our cattle pastures, because of all the running water, but this past week that didn't matter one bit.

We were choppin' ice, like crazy....

I use the term "we" loosely, cause well Caleb did most of the choppin', but I did always chop the ice for our beef calf, so that counts for something.



Generally he would cut a square / rectangle  in the ice....


And he would shove pieces out away from the hole, so we would have plenty of room for what we would be choppin' the next day.


Occasionally we would get someone who would patiently wait till he was done so she could go and get a drink.


This is how thick the ice was daily when we would go to chop the holes back open. Generally at least 3 inches thick or so...




The nice thing about this spot, was that it was deep enough...


Caleb could shoot the ice chunk underneath the ice layer and you didn't have to mess with tryin' to get those chunks out of the hole.

The temps have gone up some but the ponds still haven't melted fully....

It's gonna take a while to melt all that ice, but at least the holes aren't freezing back solid anymore.

Well I am off to get some house work done...

Later this week I will put up all the snow pics I got from last week as well as a pic of our new dining room table.

Laters,
JP

5 comments:

  1. Boy does that bring back memories. Before moving to the city my in-laws had some cows and DH and I were the ones who had to get up every morning in the winter to break the ice and feed them. Some times I do miss it (for my kids sake).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Growing up we always brought the cows home to the corrals during the winter and we had a heater on our tanks so there was no ice to chop. Thankfully!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm glad I don't have to chop ice for chickens! lol

    ReplyDelete
  4. We were choppin' ice too... but we don't have ponds! Just tubs. (And I also, use 'we' very loosely.) ;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. ALways fun chopping ice...ha! We have our cattle close to home with tank heaters...it gets to be -30 here so we would not want to be chopping ice!! Hope you can stop by and say hi. :)

    ReplyDelete