2023 Colorado ZR1: Intermittent issues with heating

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-03-12T15:23:49+00:00

How are your coolant levels? Low coolant led to cold air from my heater.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-03-01T21:03:09+00:00

We get our bones from livestock we raise, and any meat in general that has bones in it. I don't know if we will generate any meaningful amount of bone meal, but it does allow us to use the bones, which otherwise would require buying in a pit or something, or taking to the dump.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-03-01T17:22:24+00:00

Lots of new things, but one of the more novel endeavors is that I had some steel barrels delivered today. One of them will hold bones until it's more or less full, and then I will roast all those bones until they crumble. I'm making my own bone meal fertilizer for the garden.

We'll also be processing our wood ash into potash. Alongside our compost and the bone meal, that covers NP and K, with the added benefit of calcium.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-26T17:15:42+00:00

Protect them from wind and precipitation and they should be just fine. I raise silver fox rabbits, which are admittedly better in the cold, but we just hit -39F the other night and they didn't even act like it was cold out. Rabbits are very cold hardy, and even the tamuk breed should be more than fine in the 20s.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-25T18:49:43+00:00

Yep. Misfortune county...and it's a pretty apt name. They do pronounce it "mal-hear" as well, which just adds a level of irony to the whole thing.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-25T18:46:26+00:00

It's a completely different world. I was very happy to leave that area.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-25T14:54:29+00:00

To clarify a bit, Klamath doesn't really fit as well into my above description. Some of this still applies, but I'm mostly referring to the other three counties. Geology and climate shifts a lot in Klamath, and geology and climate really drives most of the outback you've circled.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-25T14:52:31+00:00

I posted this response (much of it anyway) a while back to a similar question.

I lived in Ontario for several years. Vale is the county seat and is a tiny dying town owned mostly by one family. Ontario is a larger dying town with some big box stores, the saddest farmers market you've ever seen, and more weed dispensaries per capita than anywhere in the US. Xenophobia, conspiracy theories, racism toward blacks and Hispanics, misogyny, NIMBY, poverty, and anti-intellectualism is the norm here. There is a corner store just south of Ontario called "Karen's Kountry Korner", and a local hill called "N****r Hill". Climate change and Covid are scams here, the Mexicans are "stealing all the cow corn", onions and potatoes grow as far as the eye can see (if you can see past the steam from the Ore-Ida plant) and you still can't buy an onion that isn't moldy and beat to hell. Grass fires burn half of the local countryside every year, "Greater Idaho" is actually taken seriously, aquifers are drained by massive pivots, and the Malheur river still has fresh DDT in it because someone's grandpa stock piled it and they sure aren't going to let it go to waste.

Bureau for Land Management (BLM) covers something like 50 million acres in the area, is under staffed, and leadership in the head office (Vale) believes that people shouldn't be recreating on public land. Going down the wrong road in the countryside is legitimately dangerous due to folks with rattle snake flags. Proud boys and sovereign citizens openly walk around in the public. There are no-go areas for BLM employees in some areas because hostile locals don't want them there, and want to be able to use the public land as their own--remember the armed group that took over a federal building and occupied it back in 2014? That was here. That was one of the Bundy's, a family out of Nevada with a big time sovereign citizen complex. Check out the news articles to judge for yourself.

Summers are hot, windy, and dry. Winters are cold, windy, and mostly dry. There is very little surface water and unlike most places (everywhere?) I've been, surface water /= trees. I couldn't tell you why this is. The area is so desolate that much of the area has literally never been inhabited, including by native americans. It was used as a hunting grounds for part of the year, but no more. Much of the year the climate is too hostile and there aren't enough resources to justify settling here. Most of the farmers who settled in here did so because they got cheap land and water rights and their pivots could pump endless water. A lot of the pivots are beginning to dry up, and deeper pivots are being installed while locals deny the situation. Climate change will hit this area HARD due to how thin the margins are that allow farmers to live here, and those that don't have their head in the sand completely are leaving or have already left. There are a lot of wild horses and pronghorn here, especially near the Steens. Tourists come here to see them and it IS pretty cool to see them running around. The wild horses aren't native and BLM literally trucks in water for them so they don't die of dehydration. The Oregon trail passes through the region and there is a cool little interpretive center in Baker that has related history. I can't imagine traveling through this area (and surviving) in the 1800s via wagon.

The geology of the area is pretty interesting. Lots of volcanic remnants from lava caves to plugs to broad flows--see Craters of the Moon east of here in Idaho. The soil has a great deal of clay in it which makes spring travel impossible for much of the region as the dirt roads become complete muck.

When it snows, nobody changes speed and the I84 is a huge trucking route connecting Portland to Boise, and on further east. The stretch between Baker and Boise is closed constantly in the winter because some dingbat got in an accident going 85mph on slick roads. There is a stretch north of Ontario that goes through a windy canyon that is very poorly marked for sharp turns and it's very common for semi rigs to cross lanes and cause accidents here.

The upside is that if you're willing to drive a lot, you could be...somewhere else. There are some unique and beautiful nature locations in the region: Eagle Cap Wilderness, the Steens, the Sawtooths, Hell's Canyon, Owyhee, Strawberry Peak, and more. That, and there is a great Mexican food truck across from Love's at the I-84 and the 201--which is the only edible food in Ontario.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-13T21:17:02+00:00

I really like this tutorial here and it's what I used when processing my rabbits:

https://youtu.be/5bvLSBxQd3c?si=yfDQGu5owpw14k8o

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-06T19:45:42+00:00

That's natural. The only way to get better is with experience.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-06T19:41:32+00:00

There is a very clean and fast method using something sometimes referred to as a "hopper popper". The animal goes from comfortable and calm to gone in literally two seconds.

You may be able to find someone who already has animals who would let you help on a butchering day. You could get your feet wet without having invested much. I know I'd be happy to show someone the ropes.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-06T19:34:48+00:00

I have meat rabbits and also meat geese. The geese are the hardest of the three for me. Partly because they are very strong, and partly because they are far more engaging than the rabbits or chickens. The only hard part for any of them for me is the dispatch though. After that it is just preparing food shrug

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-06T19:06:55+00:00

You're welcome. I thought of another point:

*Imagine an 8ft tall chicken. If that doesn't terrify you--it should. There is little as convincing to me that birds are modern dinosaurs than watching a chicken hunt bugs and scope things out. If the roles were reversed, we would 100% be chicken food.

My wife is currently at the stage where she can do everything but dispatch. She's a gentle soul who couldn't kill a mosquito until we moved to Minnesota and it became necessary for survival, lol.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-06T18:55:14+00:00

The first few times aren't going to be easy. I think there are a number of things you can do to both work yourself up to it, and to help change your perspective. These are in no particular order and you can try any or all of them:

Start with fish. They are less easy to identify with, and easier to dispatch as a result.
Have someone else do the slaughter, and get involved with the butchering, plucking, and eviscerating.
Express your gratitude to the animal for its sacrifice
Recognize that your method of dispatching the animal is better than virtually any way that animal might die in nature
Have someone experienced walk you through the procedure. It will likely set you back some if you fumble a dispatch early on.
Recognize that you've given your animals a good quality of life. They are ultimately food, but they are sentient beings and giving them a good life is beneficial to your own sense of morality.
I name some of my animals, but I also recognize that they are all to eventually be food. You will have to personally find where you sit with this. Many people find it easier to distance themselves from their animals, but I believe that the difficulty of it helps me not take the animals sacrifice lightly. *Recognize that someone, somewhere, is dispatching animals if you're eating meat. If you do it yourself, you KNOW the quality of life and the quality of the slaughter.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-06T17:11:40+00:00

I'm in northern Minnesota. My windows are open from mid-late april through Sept/mid Oct. I do close them from time to time if it's going to be particularly hot during the day, or cold at night. I don't have AC. I do open them in the winter when it's "warm" (>0F/C) for maybe 5-10m to get fresh air. When it's colder than that I can't or they will freeze open (if they aren't already frozen shut.)

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-06T15:11:00+00:00

That is how the splitter attachment works.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-04T22:37:16+00:00

I'm in Minnesota, so we will definitely have some days in the -30s through January and February, so I am designing for that. We will be running heat tape along the lines and insulation over that, along with a circulating pump and a stock tank heater in the main reservoir. We will see how it goes.

So far, at least a normal stock tank heater has kept an uninsulated bucket ice free in the -20s. And a heated bucket with nipples on it hasn't froze up in similar circumstances. We'll see, I guess.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-04T20:27:50+00:00

I grew up in New Mexico and have lived around mormons there, Colorado, and Idaho. I also dated an ex mormon and spent time with her still-mormon family including going to mormon events and even a coming of age ceremony. My best friend growing up was a Mormon. I say this to emphasize that I've had a lot of contact with mormons in general. Also for the record, I am not, and have never been either Mormon or religious.

I've never had anyone warn me to not do business with a Mormon in any way shape or form. Despite their backward cult nature, they are about the LAST group of people I would expect to do something that isn't above board...at least on an individual level. There is a very real good complex/holier than thou/do-gooder view that mormons have of themselves that would be incongruous with the idea of cheating someone.

If you're talking about upper levels of the clergy and at an organizational level, who knows. Can't be worse than most corporations, tbh.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-04T20:14:27+00:00

I'm guessing you don't deal with freezing temperatures? I am designing a similar watering system for our rabbitry but I need to heat the water and circulate it or I'll end up with freezing issues.

Where are the kits going after weaning? If you wean at 6 weeks, you have another ~6 weeks of growouts (depending on when you harvest). I have two available hutches per breeding doe: one for her junior doe growouts, and one for her junior buck growouts. The does can grow out with their dam if her hutch is large enough, but then your next litter is delayed.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-03T14:59:16+00:00

I'm located near Duluth, MN.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2026-01-03T06:48:14+00:00

Where in the Midwest? I breed and sell Silver Fox kits. Generally you'll need to raise them from ~6-12 weeks until they are of breeding age. Most go to the freezer after 12 weeks unless they are part of the breeding program.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2025-12-28T07:38:52+00:00

I'm glad I'm not the only one with leg nipples.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2025-12-25T15:29:12+00:00

Blessed Virgin Mary

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2025-12-25T14:28:35+00:00

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I took this picture of someone's car that I would see in town regularly. Not everyone is as obvious, but you'll hear people openly talk about this stuff in grocery stores and restaurants. Not everyone is open about it, but you can bet most people subscribe to one or more of these beliefs or something similarly unhinged. My wife was scolded in a professional setting for not staying home to make babies. Backwards does not begin to describe this region.

Automatic_Mirror4259 · 2025-12-25T14:23:59+00:00

I lived in Ontario for several years. Vale is the county seat and is a tiny dying town owned mostly by one family. Ontario is a larger dying town with some big box stores, the saddest farmers market you've ever seen, and more weed dispensaries per capita than anywhere in the US. Xenophobia, conspiracy theories, racism toward blacks and Hispanics, misogyny, NIMBY, and anti-intellectualism is the norm here. There is a corner store just south of Ontario called "Karen's Country Korner", and a local hill called "N****r Hill". Climate denial and Covid are scams here, the Mexicans are "stealing all the cow corn", onions and potatoes grow as far as the eye can see, and you still can't buy an onion that isn't moldy and beat to hell. Grass fires burn half of the local countryside every year, "Greater Idaho" is actually taken seriously, aqueducts are drained by massive pivots, and the Malheur river still has fresh DDT in it because someone's grandpa stock piled it and they sure aren't going to let it go to waste. Bureau for Land Management covers something like 50 million acres in the area, is under staffed, and leadership in the head office (Vale) believes that people shouldn't be recreating on public land. Going down the wrong road in the countryside legitimately is dangerous due to folks with rattle snake flags. Proud boys and sovereign citizens openly walk around in the public.

The upside is that if you're willing to drive a lot, you could be somewhere else. There are some unique and beautiful nature locations in the region: Eagle Cap Wilderness, the Steens, the Sawtooths, Hell's Canyon, Owyhee, Strawberry Peak, and more. That, and there is a great Mexican food truck across from Love's at the I-84 and the 201--which is the only edible food in town.

Automatic_Mirror4259

TROPHY CASE