First day of rest

Well we finally can say the house is liveable. We even rested and watched movies with the girls today.  The weather has been less than clement and the rain and wind have curtailed any productive outside work today anyway.  It was a lot easier to get a load of coal in than I thought and only took 4.5 hours from start to finish including the two hour drive round trip to get the coal.  One more load to go before winter. There is still a summers worth of work fixing various buildings and organizing things around the farm but we finally got a small garden dug in yesterday.  We have two amazing garden spaces totalling about an acre.  We haven't got the time to spare to plant them this year but they have amazing soil, the like I have never seen.  The previous owner gardened for 20 years and obviously paid attention to revitalizing the soil.  The fact that it sat fallow for the last four years I am sure contributed to the top notch quality of the soil.  We had the time yesterday to put the scythe to work on some of the exceptionally long grass around the property, what a treat to use such a custom tool it worked brilliantly.  It is a different life homesteading, the biggest challenge is water conservation.  We only have a small cistern and breaking some water waste habits is proving to be rather difficult.  Anyway today felt like it is all coming together finally.

Holy Doodle

Take a wild guess at how much a plumber charges out here, go on....you're too low, $275/hour from the time he leaves his office.  So we did not hire a plumber.  So what did we do when the septic line backed up for the second time in as many days?  Of course, exactly what you would do, fortunately there is no one out here to hear you scream.  Then Brad showed up with welder in hand to fix aforementioned stairs and of course he had a possible solution and, well, lets keep our fingers crossed while we wait for our composting toilet.  If you ever need to clean out a septic line try flexible plumbing pipe connected end to end with small screws.  At the end of the contraption screw in several long screws to form a ball of spikes and scrape out the pipe.  We found what we think will be an amazing alternative to using fresh water to wash away effluent.  It is called Natures Head, even the name is neat.  Funny how I can leave the navy but it still follows me in small ways.  We talked about living a simple life true to our beliefs and values for so long, to finally be here is a true "turn of a friendly card" to quote Alan Parsons.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Friedrich Nietzsche

Wow the back steps collapsed while Amanda and the girls where on them!  That isn't even the beginning.  Where to begin? We arrived beginning of June, the place was unfit to live in.  We rolled up our sleeves pushed aside the west coast sloth and relied heavily on my family, Kari, Brad and company have been invaluable.  Did you know they modeled Macgyver after Brad?  So we have daily surprises and so far most of them have been, holy doodle, what do we do now!!  Did I mention the septic backed up into the bathroom and mudroom!  Amanda has been amazingly Zen about everything so far, I personally believe she is still in a state of shock.