We’ve just gotten to the point in the year when water no longer freezes hard outside, and this small change has immeasurably improved my daily life at the farm.  At some point I hope to have a clever system for providing water to my sheep in the winter, but I didn’t have it this year.  My non-clever system was based around 5-gallon jerry cans that I filled with hot water in the bathtub and carried out to the sheep.

The trick was to bring the sheep just the right amount of water that they would drink it all before it froze.  Depending on how much snow was on the ground or how thirsty the lambs were for their mothers’ milk, this usually meant 3-4 trips a day with a couple of jerry cans each time.  Water, I discovered, is surprisingly heavy*, a fact my back and shoulders will probably remember well into the summer.

Now I’m living the easy life, though.  The ewes and lambs in the barnyard have a 50-gallon stock tank that I can fill with a hose from the hydrant at the wood boiler.

It goes very smoothly unless a lamb gets interested.

Out in the field, the system is even slicker. The Badger Company, a high-end personal care products manufacturer in the town next door, buys organic olive oil in 1000-litre containers that they only use once; when they’re empty, Badger donates them to local farmers.

The next refinement will be to move the storage tank to the top of the hill, connect it to hoses feeding float valves on the 50-gallon water bowls, and then in principle I’ll have an automatic watering system.  To be continued!

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*59 pounds each, for the data-driven among my readers.