Things are hopping at our little homestead (a.k.a. our little piece of heaven on earth)! And what a productive weekend!Â
Thanks to the help of our fabulous neighbors, who loaned us their truck so that we could pick up a rented trencher, we trenched approximately 500 feet of water line on Saturday. We’re very grateful to have good soils – not too much sand, not too much clay, and no rocks whatsoever. We also started putting pipe together on Saturday.Â
Then on Sunday, after a trip to the store for more supplies, our fabulous neighbors came to our rescue again. They came over and spent several hours helping us lay the rest of the pipe and covering the trenches back up. There was heavy rain in the forecast for last night into this morning (boy was it!). They knew it was in our best interest to have that project done so that the rains didn’t fill our trenches back in before we got the pipes in, causing us to dig them out all over again. On top of that they loaned us their tractor and shredder so we could get the grass that was two feet tall down to a manageable level in order to mark out the homesite for the house infrastructure crew that will coming out later in the week. (I do have to say, it hurt my feelings a little to cut down that beautiful grass – but the area directly under where the house is going will be wiped out anyway.)Â
Here are a few pictures of the water line progress.
We took plenty of pictures and went through much discussion for these water lines. We put a lot of thought in to their locations and want it all documented so that in the future, we’ll know exactly where everything is. We put in shut off valves in strategic places so that if we ever do have problems, we can more easily isolate where they are occurring and make the necessary repairs (as opposed to digging up the entire water system!). We also laid out the lines to allow for easier future expansion as we add structures and critters.
We did take an extra day off and also managed to install two spigots (one right in the garden!) and fence 450 square feet of garden space. We have stuff that needs to be transplanted and others to direct sow. But we had to get fencing up to keep the critters out, lest we just serve up and gourmet salad bar for them. 🙂  We are only using a portion of what we tilled for now. It’s WAY more garden space than we’ve ever had and we had a budget on fence material that we had to stick with.
Only about two weeks left before the house should be ready. We are so excited about how close we are getting to living on our homestead full time! And added to that whirlwind of activity, our bees will be arriving April 14th. Stay tuned, it’s gonna get crazy around here.
Until next time, worms rock and bees rule.
