One of the benefits of living in the country is the wonderful, clean water from our own well. To keep the well from freezing during the winter months, it is housed in a small building next to the main house.

One day I walked out to the well house to get some tools and got quite a shock…someone had ran into the building and knocked it off its foundation.

At first, I thought someone had merely “tapped” the building and simply busted in the wall near the door… but as I dug into the problem this Monday, I quickly discovered how hard it must have been hit.

In a nut shell, the entire south wall was moved 4.5 inches west – busting loose the concrete bolts used to mount the west wall onto the foundation. Continue reading Repairing the Wellhouse →

Another item we learned to freeze this Summer was beans – green beans.

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The process is pretty standard – wash and snap the beans, set the water to boil….

After you blanch them, let them dry and then package them up into bags for the frezzer.

I love dill pickles – so when our garden started producing tons of cucumbers, we decided to learn how to pickle pickles.

Start by washing and cleaning your cucumbers…

 Chop them up – either in slices or spears. We choose to use a pickle spice package from the store as we didn't want to mess with figuring out the mixture.[@more@]

Heat up the brime mixture (ie. water, vinegar and spices) while bring a pot of water to a boil. 

 Fill your jars with cucumbers…

Top off with the brime, screw on the lid and place in the boiling water. Let boil for a few minutes and then take them out.

 Let them sit for 12 hours to cool (don't they look good?)

And boy – do they taste good! 

Note that this burger is made with neighor raised organic beef, garden fresh beans, corn, tomatoes and of course our famous pickles.

Shingles, wood, tar, sky light.

Now put a hole in it and add some rain.

That has been my life these last few months. But no more!!

The roof is still there – as is the shingles, wood, tar, and sky light – but the hole has been repaired and the rain is (hopefully) on its way out.

Now if only I can find an egg beater, crowbar and a milky way bar….

Rumor has it that Southwest Idaho has broken the all time record for Spring rainfall. Regardless if this rumor is true or not I believe it!

Why do I believe it?

Because my basement staircase is crying!!!

You read correctly my staircase is crying. The ground has soaked up enough water that it is starting to force it back through the concrete into my basement. Sigh.

At first I thought the water was coming in under the basement door so I placed some towels by the door and waited. I did some online research on sites such as www.hearnph.com/plumbing-services-in-perry-oh/ to just see what the scenarios could be if it was unfortunately a leak and what my options were if I needed a plumber. The next day, the basement floor was flooded and the towels were dry.[@more@]

At this point, I was very confused. A friend said he thought it may actually be from a pipe or something similar, so suggested I should find a plumber just in case. I took a look at a few websites, like https://valleyservice.net/fargo-services/plumbing in particular, but decided to sleep on it.

Today however, it was raining when I woke up meaning that I had a chance to find the leak. I kept thinking of all of the areas in the house on where it could be coming from. Perhaps it was an issue with the roof and I needed to get in contact with someone similar to carolinahomespecialists.com/areas-we-serve/greensboro-nc/, or perhaps one of my water pipes had burst.. who knows! After staring at the staircase for a while, I finally figured out where the water was coming from!

Once I knew that, I hooked up a system to where the water coming out of the staircase could run directly into my shopvac. Problem solved!

Or so I thought…

I had found one leak…there where multiple leaks through out the staircase…

Much sadness.

Tonight at Bible study one of the guys told me that there was some chemicals you could put on the concrete that would seal it up. Alternatively, I could just look on a website similar to www.paultheplumbernh.com/amherst-plumbing-heating-cooling/ to try and find a professional solution to my leak. This would probably be the most reliable method of returning my home to its normal state.

All I must do now if find some of that stuff and pray for the rain to stop!!!

This has been one of the worse allergy and sinus Springs on record. Well, at least, it is at the top of MY list!!

There was a time when I used to mow and bale hay without trouble minus the first few days when everyone was sneezing. Now days in my old years I live on allergy medicines and tissues.

I guess I need to eat more local honey.

Oh speaking of Spring – we have a garden!

Yeah, this may be old news for most of you but to me it is still pretty cool! This would be my first “real” garden since I was eight or nine.

We are sharing the garden with several ladies in the community which is nice when it comes to watering and weeding the garden. It is also helpful to have others to work with when we are landscaping and making changes to the space. By having a helping hand to load the skips, the work was halved. We got inspiration to hire a skip after seeing an advert for skip bins sydney way and realised that a good clear-out was exactly what the space needed – so we did it together! However, it also comes with…shall we say…challenges? As with anything, the more people you have working on a project, the more opinions and comments you get. I guess the Lord wants us to work on our team building skills.

Yesterday was my day to work in the garden. It seems that the soaker lines we placed in the ground were not reaching the corn or tomatoes rows. I also bought some new plants from a company like Gardeners Dream and it seems like the water hasn’t reached them either. I hope they’re not ruined and I can somehow revive them!

I spend a lot of time in my garden so I was really disappointed to see that the soaker lines aren’t working properly. Seeing that not having water is bad for the plants…yesterday was a day of moving water lines, digging trenches, and adding new soaker hoses.

To be honest, there are a few new things I might invest in for the garden. For example, recently I have been thinking about purchasing a new pergola. I have seen some gorgeous vinyl pergolas online and I have been totally inspired to buy one.

Pergolas offer a lovely area to unwind and relax in the shade, and after a long day in the garden, that is just what you need! One of my friends has a pergola in her garden and it adds such a nice touch to the outside of her home. Have you ever thought about getting a pergola for your garden? Let me know if so as I would love to hear your recommendations!

Anyway, hopefully, very soon, the plants will get water and the veg will grow. Do you like spending time in the garden? Feel free to share any gardening tips in the comments below!