Water Debacle

We bought an old house. It was built in the late '60's. But we liked it that way. We are not fans of the open floor plan that is popular in all new houses these days. Maybe that is because it is easier to contain mess and noise and chaos if there are walls dividing the rooms. I don't know, but great rooms stress me out!  

We love our slightly haphazardly assembled home. We like that it was built by a man (who's son we have met) and not by a developer. We like that, by coincidence, we have met every previous owner of this house (all 4 of them!). We DO NOT like that the components of our house are original (read: old) or of crappy "flip house" quality. We are trying to slowly (and without accruing more debt) replace the cheap with quality. 

We were hurried along in that respect when the water company contacted me and told me that my bill was over $200 this month and that, in addition, I have used over 44,000 gallons of water in a week. Obviously I had a leak. We have been experiencing torrential rain these past few weeks so this "lake" of water I should be seeing from the leaky pipe was being hidden by the lakes of water the rain has left. I had no idea where this leak was.

I contacted a plumber and when a 17 year old kid stepped out of the truck I was a little apprehensive. Zack was wonderfully professional, helpful, and was great about the fact the kids wanted to watch every move he made. He was able to locate the leak, unfortunately it was one of many...down the length of a pipe about 1/2 an acre long. 

This was the first place he found it. I didn't have my camera when he showed it to me and water was shooting out in all directions. This was after we turned the water off to the house. 

Ya. So my pipe was a little rusted and corroded and all around nasty. Ya, all our water...to include the water we drink, was flowing through this pipe. They don't use this kind of pipe any more...

 They came and dug a huge trench and upgraded my house's main line. 

2 days and $3000 later, Elliot thinks it was totally worth is because he got to see a backhoe up close. 

I'm just glad this month's water bill will not be $200. 

Farm Update!

I love farm updates because I feel I can see some changes (and successes) that I often miss doing the day to day maintenance. As always, we have some really nice sunflowers. If you look close, you can see some of our bees hard at work on this flower. 

A bright yellow sunflower against the bright blue Arizona sky makes such a pretty picture!

Last year's corn crop was terrible! This year we actually grew some really nice ears. Leigh was so proud of it. We barbecued it with some home-grown ribs and chops. It made a perfect dinner! 

Our duck population has been doing very well. We have made them their own pen. We also decided they needed their own pond. 

Pez is one happy duck. All the other ducks use the pond too. 

Ducks that fly are not fun. They kept flying out of the pen and when we would come out in the morning they would fly madly around. Clipping wings is painless for them and keeps them confined and safe in their enclosure. Catching them was an adventure I do not look froward to repeating, but we got them all! 

This is Orchid. She has gotten a reprieve from the slaughterhouse by being the most personable pig we have ever had. She busted out of the pigpen and has been happily cruising around our backyard for over a week. We have decided to stop raising pigs for meat for the foreseeable future (they are expensive and smelly) but we need a living garbage disposal. We also plan on using her to till the garden in between crops and deter the crap-head teenagers that jump our fence and open our pens, She is almost 250 lbs now and can get to be up to 1200 lbs. I'm hoping to keep her smaller than that! 

Right after I took this picture (in which she was snoring like a chainsaw) I walked up to her and started scratching her belly. She rolled over on her back just like a dog and I swear she smiled! She's a good piggy!

The rabbit colony is my masterpiece! The little rabbit military houseing I built did not hold up well though monsoons. (I also did nothing to seal or protect the wood.) I prefer raising my rabbits in a colony setting anyway, but we were having a hard time finding a way that was truly escape proof. We finally figured it out!

1/2 inch hardware cloth, heavy duty garden stakes, and hog ring clips make an incredibly secure enclosure! 

All but 4 of these females will be harvested this week and then we will introduce our male, a New Zealand named Arnold. We will be making nests out of buckets with lids and 6 inch PVC pipe. Of course I will add pictures when I do that. I like that the rabbits can live socially and exercise freely. I also like the ease of chucking a bale of Timothy in and knowing they are fed for a week. The maintenance of colony living is sooooo much less. I highly recommend it. So much easier than cages.