Life on the Homestead...Chickens and Water Pipes

On December 23, Kessiah went out to do her normal chicken chores and made a horrible discovery!  We had 1 chicken left!  Coyotes must have gotten to them overnight...there were a couple of dead ones on the ground...but the rest were just gone.  It was a sad day.

Ryan decided we needed a new and better chicken coop...one that would provide better protection.  We have been talking about rebuilding the chicken coop since we got here...but this provided additional incentive.  Ryan had taken the week of New Year's off work so he had time for a project.  He started studying plans and pictures on the internet...a few trips to Home Depot and he was on his way to building a chicken hotel!

Our lone survivor!  She is still laying eggs for us.

It just doesn't seem right!  After a fun New Year's with family here to visit...we woke up on January 2nd to frozen pipes.  The water on the south side of the house did not work...and around 1:00 in the afternoon water started pouring from the vent in the ceiling of the downstairs hall bathroom!  That is really not something that any homeowner wants to see!  Thankfully, Ryan got the water turned off to the house pretty quickly.  We called our insurance company and got the ball rolling to fix the damage.  They had to cut out the ceiling in the bathroom to find the broken pipe.  Then they cut additional holes in the wall of the laundry room and blocked off the whole back hallway to set up blowers to dry things out.  They had to move the hot water heater on that side of the house as well...which meant no hot water in the kitchen!

Then...because...I guess we hadn't learned our lesson and let water drip through the night we had another broken pipe under the kitchen sink the next morning!  We were waiting for it because the pipes were frozen again!

We figured out that it is around 10 degrees cooler out here than in town...so we can't trust the internet temperature to determine whether or not we let faucets run overnight!  Hopefully, we have that figured out and can prevent future issues!

So, the distractions of the water pipe problems meant Ryan didn't finish the chicken coop over the break.

Here is what the ceiling to our hall bathroom currently looks like.  Ryan climbed up in there yesterday to check out the insulation situation so he could access what we need.