Homesteading

You’ll Have Those Days

….When nothing sounds better than to be living in a condo, surrounded by miles of pavement.

Sunday and Monday it rained about an inch in 36 hours. For the island, in the Olympic Rainshadow, that is a lot of water to deal with (it would be like 3″ of rain on the mainland). We had a huge mess out back by the shop area. While most of the gutters are buried and pour into the woods downhill, the lean to section had no gutters. It was boot sucking in some areas, as we trenched to get the pools moving downhill. Finally the water was moving, and we were able to breathe. We were fortunate, the water didn’t get high enough to get into the shop thankfully. The back of the shop, we have the gutters coming into a “Y” so they can be easily hooked into water tanks. Well, normal years we’d have had weeks to get the tanks into place. Not this year!

The other issue was we were waiting on our landshapers to come back and do the road up to the shop, and we thought we’d be OK with what we needed to do waiting a few weeks. Usually September is dryer. But not this year, it is one of the rainiest ones in history.

With a couple of days of sunny and dry weather, we got busy. The lean to section is now fully guttered. We just have to hook up temporary tubes to carry rain off. They will eventually be put into trenches.

I love living rural, love our land and homestead…but I won’t lie. When your foot sinks into mud quicksand and you fall on your hands and knees, then have to pry your leg out….it’s hard to feel love at that moment.

But then the sun came out and it helped me realize we’d get it all done. We’d be OK. And that concrete just doesn’t make my heart sing like trees do.

~Sarah