I haven’t been taking much computer time lately, but yesterday I found myself typing an email to my brother’s family. As I was typing, It started to feel like a blog entry. Since it has been so long since I have written anything on this blog, I decided to take an easy way out, and just copy most of the email. It gives a little snapshot of the things that have been going on here. (I have taken out the names to protect the innocent)
Dear ________,
It was good hearing from you. We have been very busy here, too, with the pond construction, getting the produce in and trying to start a new schedule with school.
We are trying to be productive today. Erica is peeling the last of our peaches, Matthew is gathering multitudes of ripe tomatoes, Christina and Simon are snapping green beans, we are hoping to get most of our apples in, and Lisa is canning or freezing everything as we get them to her. She just gave Timothy some cereal and a bottle and he is now taking a nap.
The fellow that you met when you were down here finished the excavating job last Friday. He spent three days on the roads, with fixing about 1/4 mile of our ditches, putting in three tiles for drainage, and making the steep road on the other side of the pond. (It is very steep, but the 4-wheel drive truck and Matthew’s four-wheeler can make it fine.) Then he spent the last four days building our dam up the way we wanted, taking the side off of that hill next to the goat lot. He estimated that he moved 300 to 400 tons of dirt and rock to build the dam! Now we have a nice site to build a large goat shed and/or barn over there. The dam is steeper than I wanted and more narrow on top than I pictured, but we would have needed twice as much dirt to make it as wide as I would have liked. We can now drive over it, but I would have liked to have several more feet on each side of the truck than we have. It will be perfect as it is, as long as none of it slides away during this winter. He actually did a tremendous job with everything and we couldn’t have been happier with his work.
And he underbid everyone else by over half! The 56 hour total came to $3,640. The other firm bid that another fellow gave me was for $8,000 and the first outfit I was talking with would have been $8,400 if they would have taken the same amount of time. They never would commit to how long it would take them, but he was guessing around 5 days which would have come to about $6,000 with their prices. I don’t think they would have come close to what our guy did. For once, I think a hired out project has actually worked the way we hoped it would. We have been burned too many times in the past.
I still have work to do with the pond, like getting the animals fenced out, putting up some screens around the drains, putting in some shut off valves for the lower pipes and supply lines, and extending the supply lines out to be used for watering the pigs and goats. I’m looking forward to seeing if that ram pump will work for us or not. I think we have plenty of time to get it all done because I don’t expect much water to collect until the Fall. Hopefully by Christmas the pond will have filled up and everything will be in place. And then we will be able to stock it with fish this spring!
That was probably more than you wanted to hear about the pond. Anyway, we are all doing well. Timothy seems to be teething but no tooth yet. He just drools a lot and is cranky when his gums are hurting. He is much bigger, though! The other children have been devouring their new school books. They have been enjoying reading them on their own and sometimes we have to tell them to put the books down and get to work!
Speaking of work, everyone else is working and I am just sitting here typing. I need to get off the computer and get to helping them. We also need to feed the pigs for today. I was waiting to get a good collection of peelings and such to take up to them. By the way, we have sold 4 of the piglets so far and we had the 8 boys cut last Wednesday at school. They will be well enough to sell this week probably, so it is time to get the word out. I really don’t like being a salesman, but I do like the money in my wallet!
Have a great weekend! We love you all! Lisa and the children all say "hi" and send their love!
Eric
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