Frozen Pipes

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Like the rest of folks in the North East, this Winter has been harsh for us. So this week culminated in a series of accidents that we're sure are common to a lot of others in our predicament.

This week was all about frozen water pipes. Things started in our restaurant kitchen. Both store and kitchen in the barn are using electrically operated heat pumps as their primary source of heat. Both of these have been failing regularly. They are exposed to the elements and as soon as negative double digit temperatures are reached, condensation freezes over and they go into a "defrost" mode.  Often they "pop" a fuse.

As we have been cleaning the kitchen, we have also turned off unused refrigerators and freezers (nominally another source of heat). All of this worked against us one morning when Chef discovered a pool of water on his newly painted kitchen floor.

It is amazing what frozen water will do to pipes...and in the barn we ended up with half a dozen breaks.

Frozen water and pipes do not mix......

To make matters worse, in the same week our kitchen in the old manor also encountered a problem. On one side of the house, the sewage water was backing up into one of our main floor powder rooms. In this case, it turned out that one of the sewage lines going to our home's septic tank was also frozen. This meant that we could not use water on one side of the house, including our kitchen.

A source of nightmares....the sewage main which froze as soon as it exited the building

The barn kitchen turned out to be a major repair, the house kitchen was a little more tricky. Using standard Roto Rooter equipment turned out to be useless, so the servicemen we called in turned to a steaming unit. The major problem turned out to be the bends in the main prevented them from reaching the frozen segment of pipe.

They ended up having to steam the pipe by entering it from the septic tank....a very messy job! But we were very pleased when their gamble paid off.

Meanwhile, as a team, we do like to try new restaurants in the area. This week we were hoping to try one in  Niagara Falls. As we eagerly approached the venue, we were dismayed when it was shut due to a broken water main....we can certainly commiserate.

In the meantime, Chef has been eagerly preparing for his "gig" at Oast House in Niagara-on-the-Lake. We were lucky to have first try at his "pub grub"; he has prepared scrumptious Duck wings, a delectable Tuna sashimi, and amazing Moroccan meat balls. He is starting today and will be there every Sunday this month.

With Chef, we are always looking for good local suppliers and this week we were pleased to meet with Rose Marie Meier of Zeta Farms.

Zeta Farms was established by the Meier family some 15 years ago. Originally from Southern Germany, the family operates a 200 acre farm in South Pelham, at the corner of Effingham and River Road. In addition to growing vegetables, they raise sheep, goats and chicken, and because they grow their own grain, they do this in an organic manner. If you are looking for some good locally grown food, Zeta Farms is certainly worth visiting

In our case, we were looking for lamb and we certainly were not disappointed (Chef's Morrocan-style meat balls now depend on it!).

The goats of Zeta Farms well sheltered from the cold

Finally, with the weather coming back to normal seasonal temperatures late this week, we had to continue to prune our kiwis. For the most part, the great amount of time taken to deal with this is due to the vines "pig tailing" behaviour. We end up spending the majority of our time de-tangling intertwined  "pig tails"....this is a real test in patience.

De-tangling kiwi "pig tails"