Michigan Thread - all are welcome!

[1muttsfan]

Frost free hydrants have a tall underground standing pipe with a drain at the bottom. When the handle is down, shutting off the water flow, the water in the standing pipe drains out the bottom and the pipe is left full of air. This prevents the pipe from freezing. When the handle is up and the pump is on, then water flows out. Invaluable if you have livestock and winter.

 

[Folly's place]

Exactly! It's a hand pump, with the water line below the frost line, so it doesn't freeze in winter. We have four of them, one for the coop, and three for livestock water tanks. LOVE them!

We keep a black rubber bucket over it, so it's not wet/ icy in winter. And in summer, those cute tree frogs lurk under the bucket often.
Mary

 

[saysfaa]

The terms are used interchangeably quite often but, technically, a hand pump pulls water up via moving the handle.

A hydrant is more of a switch that lets water flow or not but the pumping is done by the well pump. Or windmill, or whatever.

 

[bigmrg74]

Frost free hydrants have a tall underground standing pipe with a drain at the bottom. When the handle is down, shutting off the water flow, the water in the standing pipe drains out the bottom and the pipe is left full of air. This prevents the pipe from freezing. When the handle is up and the pump is on, then water flows out. Invaluable if you have livestock and winter.

Key thing here is having the water line and the drainage area for the hydrants are below the frost line. gravel around the base of the pump will allow water to drain out. if you're going to be using it multiple times a day, you would want to have large area to allow for more drainage capacity.

 

[saysfaa]

That, and remember the frostline is deeper with some types of soil than others. You don't need to figure it out on your own when you put one in; there are directions to help with how deep to go.

 

[saysfaa]

Does anyone store leaves for bedding? What do you put them in?

Last year, I filled about twenty paper yard bags with packed leaves. It was a lot of work. I'm thinking about using some bulk grain storage bags - those that are 4x4x4' or so. Has anyone tried anything like that? Or have ideas what the pros and cons might be?

 

[saysfaa]

Evidently the big bags work well for leaves. I found someone who knew someone who used them. They liked how easy it was to move them around. I think they will be easier to fill too. At $1 per bag, It will save some money too.

 

[1muttsfan]

When I installed my hydrant I dug extra deep below the bottom of the standing pipe and filled that in with pea stone, as my soil has a lot of clay and doesn't drain that great. Then I backfilled around the hydrant with sand, which makes it a heck of a lot easier to dig up when something inevitably goes wrong with it

 

[Sally PB]

Does anyone store leaves for bedding? What do you put them in?

My neighbor is bagging leaves for around the chicken run, as a windbreak, this year.

She puts 2 large drawstring garbage bags (1 inside the other, so it's double layered) in a trash bin, cuffing the top of the bags over the edge of the bin. She dumps in the leaves, then tamps them down tightly with a bucket. After the bag is filled solidly, the ties up the bags, and is stacking them around the run, outside the fence.

She has some cheap plastic fencing that she's strung up on the outside of the bags, to hold them in place. Her plan is to have about 50 bags, and then dump one or two into the run when the chickens need something new to scratch through.

 

[Sally PB]

DH really wants to have turkey for Thanksgiving. Meijer usually has it on sale for super cheap a couple weeks before T-Day. This year, I have seen very few turkeys in the freezer where they usually are, and they are $3 a pound, so a 20+ pound turkey (which is all they had) is $65-70. I mentioned this to DH, and he was adamant that we have one, so we decided to spend the $$ to get one now.

I counted only 8 Butterball brand turkeys in the freezer. $2.99 a pound. Except.... One that was 20 pounds said .99/pound. Really? Was it left over from last year? Not retagged after a sale? Anyway, it's in my freezer now.