Air Current 12 x 9 oil/canvas
Have you ever had one of those weeks when chaos hits you like a ton of bricks. Well, thats what its been like around here since the last post.
I'll have to back track a little here and give you some history...
We bought this place in 2004 and knew then, we were up for a challenge. I mean, the place IS over 100 years old. We knew it would take a few years to reverse the effects of all the time, gravity, wind erosion, rust, corrosion, ancient wiring, ancient plumbing, bad roofing, really bad fencing, etc. etc. So we have persevered for the past four years, fixing things in stages as we go.
Today we have a new well. (The old one would fill up with cow paddies each spring when the creek flooded. ...yummy.) But while we were doing that, we also decided to bury the many ancient, over head, power lines going to nowhere, r I mean somewhere? in the house, barn, shop...etc. etc.
Of course not being the type to hire these things out, we do them ourselves, as is Montana custom.
The big adventure came when after digging out the hole, (with a borrowed backhoe) attaching the water line, then sliding the well pump into its lovely pitless adapter, and back filling the 7 foot deep hole, (this is frost line depth in our part of Montana) we even put down grass seed to make it nice and pretty...we came out a few hours later to find a geyser located somewhere around the yard hydrant. One we had put much forethought into installing before we backfilled the hole. Not good...
So now we have a really large quick sand pit in our yard, not to mention all the ditches for burying powerlines, running literally everywhere, though the house yard, the barn yard and corrals. You can't walk two feet without falling into some kind of trench. Thats not good either...
Oh and oops, we don't have a backhoe anymore... so we dig it back up by hand...as is Montana custom.
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Now, there is a happy ending to this story. We did finish things up yesterday and buried everything in, nice and dry. Powerlines and waterlines. No one was killed. And again, our neighbor brought down his backhoe to save the day.
With most things like this, I can usually say that it was truly a learning experience.
We have learned many new words.
Such is life on the farm!
