Thanksgiving-now the rest of the story...

So Tom went to the ranch huse after everyone left last night to feed/check on things. He had left the upstairs tub dripping so the pipe wouldn't freeze in these sub-zero temperatures. We had the heat in the house turned up to 40- last year we didn't have any problem when we weren't there with anything freezing at that temp. BUT- when he walked in the door, water was dripping throught the ceiling of the living room. He went upstairs to discover the DRAIN had frozen and the tub was overflowing! So he bucketed water out of the tub through the window to outside.

He turned the heat upto 70. When we got there this morning, even the pipes were froze! In a 70 degree house! So Tom also built a big fire in the insert.

We then headed down the road to where the pasture is I'm keeping a few horses in. A neighbor had pasture that needed to be eaten down and there is a ditch that runs through it for water- so the ponies and Frankie have been there since October. Anyway- we needed to break the ice in the ditch so they could drink. This time I took some buckets and bucketed some water out for the horses, to see how thirsty they were. They were thirsty- I don't think they had drank since the day before. We left them with 2 full buckets of water and a large hole they can drink out of at least until tonight when it freezes again.