Breaking Ice

Ice Portal to the goats. :)

Steven just sent me these photos he took this afternoon. Since much of December and the first part of January was extremely cold here, the big concrete stock tank at the windmill began icing over, deeper and deeper. Eventually we gave up on chopping the ice, and just provided the goats with fresh water daily in tank in their barn instead. So in the meantime, the ice in the big tank froze deep (our poor goldfish are under there somewhere).

Today we had the first of a small warming trend. So Steven went out and started up the windmill to allow water to flow over the iced tank to loosen it.

Then he cut the ice into big chunks with a handsaw, and manually muscled the hunks of ice out with a hay hook and brute strength! He only did one small area of the entire tank - the side where the goats drink.

These photos show how thick the ice was - nearly a foot deep. The keyhole photo (with the goat) above - the hole was made by the pumping water, melting it where a cattail had poked up through the ice (yes, we keep a few cattails in the tank as cover for our fish).

You can see the entire tank in the background of this shot.

The residual snow and ice around the farm should all be melted off tomorrow - a forecast high of nearly 60 by the end of the week! Yippee! (the fate of the fish is still unknown. Not seen yet)