Living Without Electricity On Our 100 Year Old Farm. (vent, water)

[harry chickpea]

I want some peas. <sigh> Ours have not done well again this year.

You are getting stressed out and NOT listening to your body. Your hands are looking swollen and puffy, you just related some of the stuff you went through including high sugar, and you are trying to tough it out. STOP. Time to put the responsibility where it belongs. Call your doctor and get an evaluation and FOLLOW THE ADVICE YOU GET!!! Call your attorney and tell him to do his job.

Let us know what happens. This is NOT a time to just take a deep breath. This is a time to be angry - VERY angry.

[Forest Breath]

I only have a few minutes to post. I am really having a lot of pain this past few days, my back mostly. Sometimes my hip feels like it is detaching from the rest of my body. My Doc wants me to come back and I have an appointment, but my body cannot tolerate those shots, so no more of those. Poor Don, found out he actually fractured 2 ribs when the wall fell on him as well. I worry about tending to her petty requests, but we have no choice, we are doing everything we can to abide by our side of the agreement. Which brings me to why I am posting tonight.....

I just got a call from my attorney....

he has the court order IN HIS HAND.....SIGNED BY THE JUDGE!

So that is a HUGE plus in this entire picture. I am so thankful I do not have to worry about that this entire weekend. I am losing so much sleep and worrying has taken a huge toll on my body. I wake up at 3am and it instantly hits my mind, I cannot go back to sleep and then find myself in tears for an hour. I just want the chance for this to be over....and be fair, I am not trying to take her for anything more than what she has taken from us. Actually, a lot LESS than what she has taken from us. But regardless....the order is signed and we have a copy.

Chris is enjoying some much needed time off this evening and went to the Moofest with Amanda and Perrin. I dislike things of that nature and am enjoying some quiet time at Amanda's. I met with a loan officer today, who is also a good friend, a good guy. He adviced me on some great ways to build my credit up, quickly. I was glad of that.

This weekend on the farm...I plan to take plenty of pictures. We want to try to work on the rain water system, the Springhouse and maybe the root cellar, it all depends on how the back holds out. I also plan to explore the 13 acres I have not even had a chance to look at yet. AND...maybe even read a book...

if I can stay away from the Mennonite Community! I want to go get another huge bag of peas and shell them. LOL

Maybe I will just go get some peppers and dry them or something.

Regardless, everyone have a good weekend, I will return Monday with pictures and hopefully will have more good news next week.

[harry chickpea]

Go for that appointment. If the shots are a problem, tell that to the doctor. You just cannot ignore the stress of the past few weeks and expect to have it magically go away. And be EXTRA careful exploring the property and have someone with you.

[Forest Breath]

Well I did not get to do any exploring this weekend. The back is still pretty bad and I knew we have to get over there this week and lift those concrete blocks and the huge pieces of Oak, so it is best I not aggrevate it anymore than what it is. I cannot take the medication he gave me during the day and can only tolerate half a dose at night. I just rarely take pain medication or muscle relaxers and when I do, the mildest dose knocks me out for 24 hours. I can't stand that and certainly cannot function like that running a farm like we do. So....no exploring.

Now that the order is signed, I only have to wait for a call from my attorney to tell me when we can go over and get the things done she has requested. It is supposed to be today, tomorrow or Wednesday, so hopefully it will be soon. We are only getting 5 hours to get it all done. Don will have to break for some lunch as he is diabetic and cannot miss a regular meal.

Saturday I broke down and went to Mousecreek Nursery, knowing good and well I have to make myself stay away from plants this time of year. I went anyway and as usual, over did it a bit. I miss my herb garden. I grow my own herbs for culinary use as well as medicinal use. I ended up with several sages and rosemary, lavendar, Bee Balm, Chocolate Mint, Catnip, Spearmint, Purple Coneflower, and more. I go a few flowers and moss to put in some planters I had. So we got those planted on Saturday and I did laundry. Saturday was the main shopping day for this month, tons of dog food, cat food, chicken food, fish food and such. (I hate shopping...unless it is for plants!) LOL

Sunday we made a screen door for the front porch and put all of the cats outside. Drop Dead Fred was not thrilled when she saw that I moved her babies out into a box on the backporch. Cutie pretty much hates me now and Azrael I think would kill me if she had the ability. I did more laundry and we put the gutter on the front of the house and moved the stand up that holds two of our rain barrels. We will get the barrels hooked up today and that will be nice. Having the Spring and Branch are great, but I so miss my rainwater.

I got to read some on a book yesterday evening and I cannot even begin to describe how nice that was. To be able to stop, relax and sit in the rocker on the front porch and read. Chris has been wanting to go fishing badly, ever since we discovered the large creek at the back of the property. Saturday I surprised him with a fishing rod and tackle box with tackle. I helped dig some worms and we headed to the creek while I read. He caught some fish and even sent me a pic on my cell. He was thrilled and now I think maybe he can head out on Sunday mornings and catch supper for us!

Today I get my milk, so I will be making more butter tomorrow. After we get the barrels hooked up at the front of the house, we plan to take on the task of the root cellar. I had it in my head that we just needed to throw something over the top and then pile dirt on it, put a door on and call it done. I am so thankful we have Don and that Chris is the go between. LOL Don has been "thinking" about that root cellar. Now Don never TELLS us what we need to do, but we have learned when he said he has been "thinking" about something, we should listen. So he has the plan in place. We need to get some concrete and fix a few areas, seal the crack and such. We have to block in the window and we will make a nice heavy door. He has the plan in his head for putting a roof on with shelves along 3 walls. Then he says, we can take his tractor over and dig up some dirt where we plan to put a pond and haul it to the hill to top off the root cellar with it. So the plan has been birthed and after we get this mess done with Hazel this week, we will start that new and exciting adventure.

Meanwhile...we wait for the attorney to call, finish the rain water system off the front porch and I plan to make a bit of kraut this week.

Pictures tomorrow.

[Forest Breath]

I was getting my milk yesterday from Addamae, my Amish friend. Addamae is married to Levi and they have some of the most beautiful daughters I have ever seen. If anyone has been to the Mennonite Market in Delano, Addamae’s daughter’s are the ones who bake all of the breads for the market. When I first met them, they lived in the back of their barn. They were saving to build the house and had been living in a few small rooms in the back of the barn with their 11 kids for about a year. At that time, Addamae was 42 and expecting her 12th child. It was another daughter and possibly her last. A few years later they got the house built and moved in. They were one of the last families to get their house finished when they moved from Decatur to Delano.

As I was pulling in yesterday I realized I had not changed out of my work clothes. My heart sank. I would never disrespect them by showing up at their home without being modestly dressed. The khaki pants were fine, but the sleeveless paisley shirt was not. Thanks to Chris’ quick thinking, I did not have to embarrassingly turn around and go home to change. I pulled facing away from the house and he quickly took his shirt off and I slipped it on over my shirt.

So Addamae and myself were talking about Perrin breaking my glass milkjug and how hard those are to find, I learned that Salad Dressing is not as bad as Mayonnaise when it comes to spoiling. They never buy mayonnaise, but use a lot of Salad Dressing. She said putting it on a large rock in the dark pantry will help keep it cool and she has never had any go bad. Well YAY for that bit of info, as I would love to have that for potato salad and to make dressing for fresh salads. I certainly do not need the gallon container that she has, but a small jar in the Spring will be nice. We talked about not having electricity and she asked me what I missed the most. This made me think.

It has been a little over a year now. WOW….an entire year without electricity in our home. What a learning experience this has been for us, what a dream and what an adventure! One entire year has passed. So I thought about it. It is certainly not TV, radios, video games or even computers. I have come to accept that using a computer at work is something I have to do and in order to share this journey, this life, with the good people I have met online, I have to use that access in order to accomplish that. I am not against computers, I think they have a good purpose to be honest. But also to be honest, I am glad there is not one in my home. Chris and I met via computers, over 4 years ago now. We were both on the computer way too much. So much so that when I got home from work and on weekends, I was on mine in the bedroom, he on his in the living room, and often hours would go by. Something like that is not good for a relationship. So I am thankful we no longer have computers in the home. Lights? No way. I much prefer utilizing the natural light of the sun and when that is not available, oil lamps work fine. After thinking awhile I realized the only thing I really miss is ice. Yeah …. frozen water. I drink water about 90% of the time and before we made this choice, it was always COLD water, ice water. I craved it and still do. There is nothing more satisfying than good, cold water. So I would say, that is the one thing I miss. However, moving to the new place has helped in this. The Spring is fairly cold and keeping water in the cold water easily satisfies my craving for the cold ice water. She said she missed that at first (she was not born into the Amish community), but she has found that she digests food better if she does not drink cold drinks with her food. She said it seemed to help her asthma as well.

Then she asked what we have found to be the hardest thing to do. This one was not hard to answer. Laundry is by far the most difficult. If I did not work 40 hours a week, it would not be so hard to do the laundry by hand. But with me working so much, laundry becomes difficult to complete. Laundry, when done by hand, is time consuming. You have to boil water, get the laundry ready, set up the wash tub and rinse tubs and fill them. After separating the clothes, you wash from cleanest to dirtiest. You agitate the clothes in the tub, pressing them to the sides, tackling stains with the wash board and I will just tell you now…. Your knuckles need some tender loving care when you are done! Then you wring them out by hand, put them in the first rinse water, rinse well, then the second rinse water, rinse completely then wring by hand again before they go onto the line. Jeans are my worst nightmare and I have discovered I wear them less now. I much prefer a silk or cotton skirt and I know women many generations ago were probably thankful when they did their laundry that the simple knit and cotton dresses were in the basket….it gives you a nice break before you tackle those filthy jeans! As the water gets dirty, you try to get it all done without having to change out, but if it becomes necessary, you just take your first rinse water and make it your wash water and put fresh water in the tub for the last rinse cycle. When the clothes come off the line before bed, you are so tired you can barely press the clothespin together to release the clothes from the line. But…you are never too tired to enjoy the fresh smell of the clothes as you fold them and put them away.

So back to yesterday, we talked about slaughtering hogs and canning as opposed to smoking meat, different types of washers and even the difference in rain water vs Spring water. It was a nice visit. Meanwhile, Chris was in the car without a shirt, ducked down because 3 of the beautiful daughters were heading home from the kitchen where they do the baking and he did not want them to see him without a shirt on. I made my way back to the car and gave him his shirt back. We dodged bunny rabbits running from the gardens as we left the long driveway and I became emotionally thankful that I have this choice to live like this and that I am actually doing it. My mother had this dream, for so many years, and never had the chance to live it. It just turned into a regret for her before her death. I am thankful I took this chance.

When I first got home from work yesterday, I was greeted to a huge surprise. Chris had spent the day hand digging the huge hole in the front yard for one of the molded ponds we have. We are turning the front yard by the porch into a flower and herb garden with the two ponds there. He had one already in the ground and full of water. He carried every gallon of that water (about 100) in buckets from the branch, up the hill and steps into the pond. It was ready for some goldfish and we added 10 to the pond last night. We had supper with Amanda and Perrin at the picnic table, fed the scraps to SadieMae, Cletus, Flat Cat, Cutie, Azrael, Drop Dead Fred and watched Perrin play on the old wooden swing. It was a nice evening. I love the farm, I love my family….I love this life.

[piperspal]

Great update, FB - thanks again for taking the time to post. Just wondering...when I was little, probably around 1966-1968 (?), my dad took me to his friend's farmhouse in eastern Colorado. The lady of the house was out back hanging laundry & I saw some sort of contraption next to the clothes line. She demonstrated it, but I can't remember after all these years exactly how it worked.

It was a pedal and pump-operated (?) washing machine. From what I remember, she had to push a pedal a bunch of times, which got a belt running over two different sized belt-wheels. That provided the motion needed to run the clothes drum. I remember her saying it was "new" to her, and that previously she washed everything by hand with a washboard.

Does anyone know what I am trying to explain? I know it did not have electricity for sure. I think it would make part of your chores a bit easier if you could locate one or even build one from spare machinery parts.

[harry chickpea]

piperspal, there is similar stuff that is pretty easy to build out of an old bike and an old washer. Here are some examples:

Inhabitat » CYCLEAN BIKE-POWERED WASHING MACHINE (http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/08/22/cyclean-bike-powered-washing-machine/ - broken link)
Untitled Document
HD Clothes Washin' Man

At its simplest, a barrel with every other slat removed, mounted sideways over a wash tub, with a broomstick as a shaft and a bike and belt system as power would use the stronger leg muscles for washing, and avoid a lot of repetitive stress injury. If you watch front loaders in action, you can see that the speed of the drum while washing is just enough to make the clothes rise to the top and then drop.

Using a bike built for two would allow a second person to pedal to help power the spin dry. The system would also benefit from a flywheel of some mass.

One could probably build a washer like this for a minimal cost, or even have a school shop class build it as a "green" project.

[marmac]

We didn't have electricity til I was 12 years old.

My mom washed with a washing machine that had a gas engine on it that you " kick started" similar to a motorcycle.

Most of those gas motors ended up powering home made scooters as people put electricity in.

[Forest Breath]

I am not sure why I expected things to go uneventful yesterday. It seems like would learn, you know? We arrived at 9am, the police were not there, but Hazel had everyone and their brother at her house. We headed up the hill and was soon approached by “Bill”, who proceeded to tell us exactly what we needed to do and how we needed to do it. I called my attorney and waited on a call back. Meanwhile, we ignored Bill. Attorney’s office called me back and told us to ignore him, but if he got too bad to take pictures and leave. Shortly after that, the police showed up. They were extremely nice to me. He was considerate and understanding. He said he would take care of Bill and Hazel. He went over to Bill and Bill was a bit disrespectful. He then basically ordered him to go back down the hill and leave us alone to get our work done. After awhile, he convinced him to leave and told him to not come back up there bothering us.

At 11:15 I left with Lakota to run to town and get some cold drinks. We were all in the hot sun and had started staggering a bit. I got drinks and some sandwiches for lunch and returned back at 11:40am. We took a break, ate lunch and got right back to work. At 12:08pm a vehicle came up the hill with a man and woman in it. They pulled right up beside my car. I walked out into the open to see who it was and my granddaughter was picking up nails close by. They backed up and both of them yelled obscenities out the window and yelled “you all don’t know what you are doing”. I noted the time on my cell phone and continued to work.

We picked up all of the nails around the old home site with a 5 pound magnet on a rope. This was done continuously the entire time we were there. We shoveled all debris, including ashes, into buckets and put it in the trailer. We took the tractor and leveled the ground where the chicken coop had been, hauling off any unburned wood and ashes. We loaded every piece of firewood, loose bark and small limbs that had fallen from the trees on the hill. We picked up every little piece of debris that we could find on the hill. We filled in the small holes where the clothesline poles had been, as well as where the bird feeder poles had been. We raked tongs over the home site with the tractor and went over it with the magnet more times, so we could make sure that there were no embedded nails left. We took the dirt off of the outhouse hole that we had put on before, made sure it was filled in completely, there was no “fluid” left, as it had already been absorbed. We buried the dirt inside the hole and took dirt from the home site area and covered the entire area of the outhouse, leaving a small mound over the actual area. We packed this down several times and walked over it MANY times to make sure it was safe. We then took shovels and rakes and smoothed the area out into a nice smooth mound, packed it down and 3 of us walked over the mound over and over to make sure it was safe and secure. After this we did a final walk though, made sure every concern had been addressed and corrected. I took about 40 pictures of the area.

We covered the debris in the wagon with a tarp, Chris got on the tractor, Don behind him in the truck and trailer and Lakota and myself in the car. We pulled out at 1:58pm and out of the gate at exactly 2pm. Lakota got out of the car and latched the gate behind us. Bill and others were with Hazel on the porch as we pulled out. I took a picture of Bill’s truck and tag, since he was the main one to harass us on that day, just in case it was needed.

We got through just in time and it was a good thing too, working in the sun for 5 hours straight took a toll on us. We would not let Don do much lifting and made him take a lot of breaks because of his age and severe diabetes. I had some heat exhaustion moment in which I became light headed, fell to the ground and it took about 10 minutes to be able to walk a straight line and Chris at 1:40pm started staggering and his speech slurring due to the heat. However, we stuck to it and was able to accomplish the task and get it completed before the deadline. I cannot imagine they could have anything else to gripe about. The sites where the house, wood shed, outhouse and chicken coop were is nothing but level ground with dirt. No debris, nails or wood of any kind are left. I even raked up all of the bark scraps and ashes and such and we shoveled it up and put it in the trailer. However, Bill made some pretty snide remarks while we were there working and I have no doubt he will find something he is not pleased with.
I just hope that it is all over with now and it can end. We have a great opportunity to have the peaceful life we desire on the farm we have purchased. We have yet had the chance to even enjoy being there as we are trying so hard to put this bad experience behind us. Maybe, just maybe they will tire of this as well and put an end to it all.

So that is done and we will wait until Friday to find out of it pleases the masses. If not, we will most likely take her back to court for contempt.

Meanwhile….on the farm

We found a large snake yesterday evening when we were taking a break. I figured to use it as a learning experience for Perrin and called him over to observe the snake. After my teaching lesson on why he should watch out for them and avoid them….he stated in his ever most excited voice how happy he was that I went to the pet store and bought him the snake he wanted! The child wants a pet snake so bad for his birthday this month. He watched in amazement as it climbed a tree and headed out on a dead limb to relax. Maybe….just maybe Perrin will listen to me and not approach any wild snakes. I wonder what makes some children not fear something like that and want one from such an early age?

Other farm news…. The gutter system proved to work last night. We had a storm come through in the middle of the night that left me with a nice 55 gallon barrel of fresh rain water just off the front porch! I will use that particular barrel to water animals, plants and general hand washing and things. We plan to work on the other water collection systems this weekend. We plan to go fishing on Saturday morning and make an attempt to catch supper. I will possibly be canning some beets or veggie soup this weekend as well. As summer approaches, we are starting to see just how well the house does in the heat. It gets a little bit stuffy in the late afternoon, but the front porch is totally shaded, so we just sit out there or down by the Spring where it is cool. Cooking and eating the evening meal outside helps to keep the house cooler on hot evenings. It cools off pretty good at night so sleeping is not a battle of fighting humidity and sweat. LOL So I think we will be OK for the summer, we shall see as time passes. Thank goodness almost every bit of the work that needs to be done is all in shaded areas. We plan to down some trees this weekend and I plan to make an honest attempt to stay away from places that sell plants of any variety. LOL The cats are adjusting to being outside, the fish are OK in the pond Chris set up and Cletus had a run in with the snake yesterday, but is fine.

[PaulNKS]

Forest Breath.

I continue to enjoy your posting. I have a question. Did I read earlier that the $7,000 was placed into an "escrow" type of account? If so, I would think that Hazel wouldn't have much say in being able to refuse you being paid. If you have pics, that will prove you have fulfilled your part of the settlement giving her no option.

On another note. The suit, agreement, settlement, etc, was betweey y'all and Hazel. Bill has no legal standing and no say in anything. If he was to approach me, I woulda told him to get lost since he has no say or legal standing in the dispute. She will probably still try to keep you from getting the money.

You made another comment about your mortgage banker friend recommending ways to establish good credit. My advice is to stay away from credit. I pay cash. It's the only way a person can get ahead. If you compare paying interest and payments over a period of time versus someone that pays cash, you pay anywhere from twice to three times what they paid. Maybe they had to wait a bit longer, but in the long run, they have more net worth, more assets, etc than if they had financed anything. A survery of the 400 richest Americans revealed a common concept. They all agreed that no one can build personal wealth with debt. I hope you keep that in mind. You don't even need good credit for a mortgage, if you find a mortgage lender that does their own underwriting.

Good luck with your continued success. I've been off-grid for 11 years and have no regrets. But, I have a couple solar panels for computer, lights, etc. I like the choices you've made to be independent. It is nice not to have to be dependent on a utility company for comfort such as winter warmth, electricity, etc. I realize you are not only off-grid but electricity free.

Keep up the good work.
Paul