Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Back to regular blogging

Today, we did a lot of burning from the old homestead site, examined more animals and checked on the pregnancies.  We discovered one of the ewes has a cleft lip so we will have to avoid breeding her.  There are a LOT of rams.  As a result, we are going to have to do a lot of castrations.  We already knew we were going to have to do quite a bit, I just didn't realize how many.  And, because of their age, band castration is not an option.  So, we are going to have to do surgical.  Crud. 

We got water today and spent a bit of time talking with The Water People.  I really like them and when we had gotten there, I was already exhausted and still had more daylight/work ahead of me.  She looked at me and said "You look like you could use a hug."  I really enjoy them and their friendship.

On the way home, we met one of our neighbors going the other way on the secondary dirt road.  We stopped and talked for a bit about the area and different struggles they have had when they moved here and issues they have had to deal with.  (Hauling water, electricity, etc.)  It reminds me of a conversation I had with a person in town who was telling me about a guy who moved here from Texas a few weeks ago.  He moved out here to live off the grid and brought the grid with him and now he doesn't know what to do.

I really enjoy living out here and fulfilling our dreams and making them a reality.  We got the wood stove fired up and are going to start cooking on it.  With the rain, we decided this would be a good way to do a "dry run" before we have to rely on it for heat as well as cooking.  This way, if there are any issues or kinks we can work them out.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

what do you do for water? I noticed you stated previously that you do not have a well nor do you intend to get one
what is the reasoning? I'm not belittle-ing your choices just curiosity it seems like it would be easier and better for the environment (no gas running back and forth) to simply dig a well

Mrs. Hoppes said...

No problems askiing and aswering legitimate questions, so don't worry. :)

Right now, we go to a friend's place for water. She has a well with RV type hook-up and we fill up there. Our main source of water will be a rain catchement system. We are still in the process of setting it up. We will have a gray water system for the garden.

We have gone back and forth on the well, but there are two things that stop us. One is the cost. Our neighbors got a well dug a few years ago. It cost them over $10,000 to dig 750 feet. We don't have that kind of money. The other is what happened with a friend of mine.

She was living with her grandmother when she was pregnant and was on well water. Her baby was born 4 months early due to contaminated well water. (Industrial waste.) While I don't see that happening here anytime soon, once your well is contaminated, it's contaminated.

Joshua said...

Wells also require some kind of power to get the water from the ground to your system. A Wind mill can do this but is not as reliable as other methoeds. Electricity is the most common and we do not have the electricity for that. Rain water collection is by far the least intrusive methoed of water supply and is far less expensive. Many of our plans are long term (6 months or more) By spring the water system should be completed including hot and cold running pressurized water.

Unknown said...

ah I didn't know it was so expensive
what do you store your water in?

Mrs. Hoppes said...

One of these http://www.dultmeier.com/products/0.920.2432/39 is what we put our water in. We have a total of 4 right now. One for the animals. One for grey water, one for us, and one that goes on the back of the truck to fill then empty into either the "home" or the "animal" as the case may be.

We get them used and clean them up if they have not been cleaned. (We rinse them out before first use regardless.)