We finally got some good snow! Here at the farm, we had a total of about 12.5 inches of fresh powder, and we're happy. It was starting to feel strange without much of a white Christmas.
Besides being nicer to look at than frozen, brown ground, the snow is actually beneficial from an agricultural perspective. It keeps the wind from desiccating the soil, and when it melts adds some valuable moisture to the ground, which is especially helpful after drought years like 2021. It also helps insulate the soil, helping microorganisms to weather the winter. Insulation on top of the ground is good for other reasons too. Here's the story of one New Years weekend I will never forget.
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Back about 10 years ago, we were raising a lot of layer chickens. We had around 1000 hens laying all year long, as well as growing out our own replacement pullets. During the summer, the hens foraged out from one of our hoophouses, kept safe from predators by electric netting fence. They would come home to roost back in the hoophouse in the evening, and lay their eggs in nest boxes located there as well.
Come winter time, we'd bed down the hoophouse deeply with fresh straw each week - over 30 huge round bales of straw per year - and while they still had access to the outside, most of the time they chose to stay inside during the day. Who can blame 'em - it gets pretty chilly out there, even with a built-in down jacket.
All those birds also took a lot of water. There was a frost free hydrant inside the hoophouse that was hooked up to several automatic waterers during the warmer months, but during the winter, I had to refill a bunch of plastic 7 gallon founts every morning. On sunny days, the hoophouse would get nice and cozy - well above freezing - and the water would not freeze in the drinkers very easily. The heat of the chickens, as well as the heat from the bedding pack of composting straw, also added some warmth on cloudier days, but sunshine was what really did the trick.
I distinctly remember a beautiful sunny New Year's eve, heading up to the hoophouse to collect eggs just after the sun went down. We hadn't had much snow, and it was bitter cold, as it often gets here around the New Year. The ground was frozen hard like a rock, and the stars were out, shining brightly above in the clear cold darkness. After collecting the eggs, I would always rinse out the drinkers so they were nice and clean when they were refilled the next morning, and any straw or debris that had gotten kicked into them would not freeze in place overnight. That evening, when I lifted the handle on the frost free hydrant to rinse those drinkers.... nothing came out.
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Since the hydrant was just inside the hoophouse - and the hoophouse was full of chickens - there was really no practical way to get an excavator inside there to dig it out and replace whatever had frozen and broken. And since the ground outside was frozen solid, there was no use trying to dig with an excavator to access it from the outside of the hoophouse. Besides, it was New Year's eve - even if it was possible to dig, everybody was closed. And those chickens needed water by the next morning.
Only one thing to do. I brought the eggs back to the house, grabbed a shovel and a headlamp, said goodnight to my family, and headed out to dig it out by hand. I knew I had a long night of digging - we put that hydrant in as deep as it could go to keep it from freezing. So while the chickens roosted and slept, I rang in the New Year down in a hole digging out the busted hydrant.
When I got to the main water line, I found that the fitting that attached the water line to the hydrant had broken. Since the ground was not insulated outside with snow, the frost had gotten down deep, grabbed ahold of the metal hydrant pipe, and heaved it up. This had in turn broken the weak spot in the system - the fitting connecting the water line to the hydrant - off from the bottom of the hydrant.
Once the hole was finished and the problem was diagnosed, I trudged in for a well deserved shower, wolfed down some breakfast, and headed to the hardware store for a new fitting and hydrant. By midmorning, I had the fitting replaced, hydrant reinstalled, and the girls had running water again. Then I took a nap.
That hydrant failed a few years later again for the same reason (under similar snowless conditions, also right around the New Year). The way the fitting broke down there the second time, the water kept running, which made the ground soft and muddy enough to dig with an excavator from outside of the hoophouse. This time, we replaced the hydrant and put a sleeve around the pipe so if the frost grabbed something, it would heave the sleeve and not grab the pipe of the hydrant. Thankfully, it's held up since then.
We don't have livestock any more, but when the temps drop fast around the New Year, I get nervous when there's not a nice snow cover. Even when it drifts up higher than the sidewalls of our hoophouses like it did this week, moving snow is a lot easier than moving dirt this time of year.
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Stay warm, and here's to a happy, healthy New Year ahead!
In community,
Farmer Chris
Great Oak Farm
