When our power was cut for the day recently owing to the power company doing some maintenance, Cheryl showed me how simple it is to get water from our newly installed gravity fed tank.  After nearly ten years of suffering no water every time there has been a power cut, we’re amazed we didn’t think of installing an emergency supply years ago!

Woke up to snow this morning! Not in the valley, although there was evidence of snow flakes on our back steps. The alpacas were very happy to get a fresh ration of hay early in the morning.

Changes to fencelines over the last few years have meant we ended up with 3 water troughs in one paddock, and none in another, so we decided to relocate one – a distance of about 30 feet. However there were 2 fences in the way, with a row of shelter trees in between, so it needed to be moved around in a big circle (through 3 paddocks, a distance of about 100 yards) to the new location. Added to this, it is a concrete trough, and extremely heavy! As the trough is too heavy to lift onto a trailer, we decided to use a hand trolley, and muscle power. Heres how it went:

Trough was dug out from original location using just these

The concrete trough was levered out of its original position using a spade,

a wooden batton, some posts for a pivot and stones to prevent the trough

from falling back to its original position.

The trough was then levered onto the handtrolley:

Ready to move

Cheryl then set off on the trek through the paddocks, much to the fascination of the resident alpacas!

Cheryl wheels trough to new location

And finally, trough is in its new location, ready to be installed. If you look closely you can see old location peeping out behind Cheryl’s left elbow.

Now in new location – old location can be seen just behind Cheryl’s left elbow