Archived News

4th January 2009

We get a few days each winter when the water pipes freeze and the frozen water in the troughs must be broken.  This morning was particularly bad with everything on the farm frozen solid. One of the original pipes outside the dairy runs up the wall and is insulated from the elements by a bale of straw, which on the whole works fairly well but a few consecutive nights of between minus 5 and 7 degrees is clearly just too cold.

Donald took the hot water from the dairy to defrost pipes up at Raikes Farm and the Tolt, but then due to frozen pipes in the dairy, the water tank could not refill. 

On to plan B - carrying hot water in watering cans from the house out into the yard and filling up containers to take around the fields. Sam, with Christopher to help, went round the cattle at Coast Hill, Lemons and Abinger, defrosting pipes with the hot water and breaking the ice in water troughs.

The water pipes which feed into the automatic milk machines were frozen as was the water inside the machine, so this was defrosted with a hair dryer!

It’s 3pm and the dairy has only just defrosted with the use of a couple of heaters, these will have to stay on throughout the night and each of the milk machines has a heater now to keep the temperature above freezing.

The paperwork planned for today is only just beginning!