Rolling Dog Farm Blog

One of our least favorite activities in winter is filling the water tanks for the horses.  With 16 tanks ranging in size from 70 gallons to 300 gallons spread across three barns and more than a dozen corrals, filling those tanks is quite a chore. Especially when it’s, say, 8 above zero.  Our biggest problem is keeping the hoses from freezing when they’re not in use; even though we drain them, there’s always some water left and it freezes hard.  All it takes is a tablespoon or two of water to plug up a 100′ hose.

In Beauty’s Barn we can store the hoses in the heated medical room.  For Lena’s Barn and Scout’s Barn we have no heated storage area, and that’s where the problem is.  So two of our fabulous volunteers from Seattle, Wayne S. and Jan. R., came out this weekend to do something about it.

As you can see in this photo, Wayne is building us a heated, insulated ‘hose hut’ to store our hoses.  (They even bought new hose reels to go with it.)  It’s not quite finished yet … this will have swinging doors to enclose it and an access ramp to make it easier to get the reels into the hose hut.  Wayne brought all his tools from Seattle, bought the materials in Missoula, and worked out of the back of his truck all weekend.

Thank you!