THANKSGIVING DAY 2027

My brother Eric and I spent yesterday pulling the electric pump out of the water tank and replacing it.  I'm glad I set the tank next to the house and a bit uphill so that our hand pump in the basement will draw water even when the power is out, the well house is frozen, or as happened yesterday, the electric pump dies. The pump in the basement is at a sink we use to process food, between the freezer and the root cellar.

At first I thought the problem was a frozen pipe down at the well house. I put a heater down there, directing the blast at the pipes. After half a day without sign of progress, I decided to open the top of the water tank and pull on the float switches. Anyway, long story short: I had no action from the pump, so we went two days without water pressure at the house, the chicken coops and the greenhouse during a big freeze. I had to rely on the hand pump for the house and the rainwater tanks for chickens and plants.

Actually, I'm glad nothing froze up, because I've been putting quite a bit of effort into protecting the water system. It's really expensive when popane or electric heat is needed to unfreeze a pipe. I'm also getting things set up with hand pumps and gravity feed, so that power outages are not such a disaster.

Anyway, now the family is gathered for Thanksgiving dinner, a couple of Eric's ducks are roasting in the oven, and the wonderful aroma is wafting up from the kitchen to the office where I'm fooling around with this new journal. As well as meat ducks, Eric sells a lot of duck eggs at the Brickworks Market, and also some at our own neighborhood market.

I'm in charge of the whipped potatoes. Thank God for potatoes. We'd have been pretty hungry or pretty poor or both if it weren't for the lowly spud.  We don't have grain land here at Thornbush, so we rely on our own spuds, sunchokes and squash from here, and buy or barter for grain from the San Juan Valley bunch.

Anita made a terrific looking medlar spice cake, from medlar pulp we processed last fall. We like to stay a year ahead, if we can. Experience is the best teacher, they say. This year's crop is still hanging on the trees, frozen solid but none the worse for it. I think it gets the medlar riper faster that way. I'm looking forward to dessert: medlar spice cake with whipped cream. Yum!

Things are finally warming up out there. I've been stoking the fire twice a day the past three days, keeping the boiler temperature good and high. One plus to all the wood-burning: I've been making a lot of charcoal for the garden at the same time.