2,500 gallons, 20,000 pints, 9463.529 litres or 9463529 milliliters!

Yep, you've guessed it, the last 2 weeks have been all about water!  We have our water storage tank in and partly filled.

First the base was built, it is 10ft by 10ft wide, quite a bit of digging was involved!

 

Levelled out with gravel...

And then filled with 2.5 tonnes of sand, compacted down and levelled out....

Then ta da... then tank is in place courtesy of some expert rolling, rolling, rolling!!

We are now "slowly" filling it from our well, we are gradually getting there and maybe by next weekend it will be full, THEN,  we will be using water from the tank and allowing the well to replenish at a steady rate.  IF our well starts to under perform we now have enough water to support it.

Of course it all needs a filter or two and some pumping as well .... trust me the well house and the route is very complicated, I just nod and Oh and Ah in the right places!

BUT it comes out of the ground through a coarse filter and into the tank, then it gets pumped out of the tank, through 3 more filters and then a UV filter - then into the house and out of the tap! Lovely!! delicious water!

So Y'know that "free" water you have when you have your own well - yep not so free :) :)

What else have we been up to? The Curry County Fair was in Gold Beach last week, so we took the afternoon off on Friday to go and see the animals, lots of fun at the fair..

I might get myself one of these, apparently you can ride them?

 

Although I think this would be more my style.....

 



 

The 4H tent was fun, if somewhat small, although I forgot to get a photo of the cows, all 3 of them....

 



 

The floral exhibits were very good, I was slightly perplexed at how most of them had a first place ribbon...

 



 

But this amazing dahlia won "best in show"...

 

The vegetable tent was full of fresh produce and I was excited to see almost all of my veggies would have held their own, except for my carrots, I can only dream of growing carrots like these....

It all goes on around here this time of year, today we had a classic car show in town, so we popped down to take a look...

Trouble is, when you go to such an event with Mr M, and someone has an old 1966 mini cooper, you can guarantee if it isn't an 1966 mini Mr M will spot it right away!  apparently a 1966 had exposed door hinges, sliding windows and a moustache grill, none of which this mini has...

He was courteous enough not to correct the owner and tell them it was actually a 1986ish mini cooper!!

We are enjoying all these summer activities, although Mr M might be giving fishing a miss next time having gone out last Sunday and spent most of the day recovering from seasickness! poor Mr M, but my freezer is Thankful for all the fishies he did manage to catch in between barfing!

I prefer to keep my feet firmly on terra ferma!

"shed" a simple roofed structure, typically made of wood or metal, used as a storage space, a shelter for animals, or a workshop

Here we go then....

Most of the last 2 weeks has been spent finishing up the new pump house. 

First, much like the garden shed, the walls were covered with tar paper and then they were finished with cedar!

The roof is red metal to match the barn! and then the corners were boxed in.

Next the inside was insulated and boarded with plywood...

Once the shed was finished it of course needed a door...

It now also has a door handle!!  Looks pretty nice, I see shed designer in Mr M's future!

The inside is also all wired and "live", that's magic that is...

The water filters were already in and working hard providing us with lovely clear water..

Next up he is putting the water tank in and then will be setting up the pump house! Should be all up and running (see what I did there) by next blog!

Mr M also finally got around to putting gutters on my greenhouse, now we are in the midst of the dry weather we need gutters *note the sarcasm* - but no worries, the rain will return soon! Plus they look good!

Not much else exciting has been happening - we are still enjoying the pleasure of a home grown garden!

We have been harvesting zuchinni's daily, I took some to our local food bank this bank, plus delivering to our neighbors, they will start shutting their doors soon when they see me coming..

I emptied out 2 more of my potato bins, "German Butterball" - delicious.......

My garlic has finished curing so the airstream is once again restored to it's glory of empty nest and we are once again enjoying fresh garlic from the garden!  I will keep some of the biggest bulbs back to replant for next year, plus I have ordered 3 new varieties to grow, we are not going to be short of garlic next year!

We have been picking cherry tomatoes for a while, but this weekend we got our first BIG tomato, it was YUMMY!! I never buy store brought tomatoes, they just don't taste of anything compared to home grown!

My outdoor plants have plenty of fruit, just need the  sun to keep on burning strong....

Runner beans are looking good, full of flowers and I spy a couple of beans ready for picking...

Finally I pulled out all my pea plants, which were FULL of greenfly/aphids, so I stuck a couple of chickens in there and they had them cleared up within a couple of hours...

It is now planted up with broccoli and cabbages ready for the fall/autumn season...

The FU is doing well, everyone is living in harmony and enjoying these long summer days..

As are we....

Social life delays blog... normal programming has now resumed!

Well, I'll tell ya! you miss one deadline and the phone starts ringing off the hook - Who knew that so many people rely on our hum drum bi-weekly blog for their breakfast read, and when it doesn't appear UGH the results are terrifying!

So here we are, and the reason for the days delay will be explained soon!

We have a garden shed - it's lovely and it has lots of room to store gardeney type stuff!!

Note the handles, we sorted through many piles of driftwood to find them...

Lots of room....

Nice job Mr M.....

And now Mr M is busy building another shed (being English you can never have too many sheds!)

He is now building a bigger pump house which is going to sit on the backside of the barn and will eventually be attached to our water storage tank!

First he set concrete formers to make it level.  The floor was framed..

Then he put down plywood for the floor...

 

Now he is framing the walls and the roof...

 



By the time the next update happens it should be finished and we will be moving on to clearing and leveling ready for our water tank.

He also went and met with the planning guy, the house plans are all fine and pretty much at a point to submit as soon as we are ready to start.  Still deliberating starting now v's early next Spring, if we complete the footings this year we are effectively building a swimming pool ready for the winter rain, which isn't ideal, so it's still a decision in progress!

So what else has been happening? the garden continues to provide, we have been enjoying all the usual suspects and plus I have been trading my cucumbers for salad from my friend Betty!

All this harvesting got me thinking and contemplating about good old Captain Birdseye and his peas, who cares about what came first "the chicken or the egg", or the good old "what is the meaning of life" crap!  What I want to know is how the heck does the Cap'n produce all those peas!!!!!!  I mean seriously there must be an entire state/country dedicated to the production of peas...

This fairly big bowl.....

 

Produced this fairly paltry amount of perfect green peas...

 

I challenge you NOT to ask this question next time you are eating peas!

 

I also went to the local beekeeping association monthly meeting in Gold Beach.   I am definitely planning to add a hive to my garden in the Spring so I want to be as comfortable and ready as I can be and so am trying to educate myself before I get my hive.

 

It was really interesting, everyone was very nice and friendly and full of advice.  That's the thing with clubs, everyone is an expert and wants to tell you how to do it, but one gentleman did say that the important thing to remember is "the bees haven't read the book and every swarm bee-haves differently"  he encouraged me to read lots of books and get prepared and attend as many meetings as I can so that I have people who will answer my questions.

 

Part of the meeting was a kind of "show and tell" where they demonstrated different ways of extracting honey from the frames, we all got a taste and it was DELICIOUS!! 

 

I am planning to go again plus one of the gentlemen invited myself and Betty to take a tour of his hives sometime, so I am hoping to do that soon!

 

We went out to one of our local farms to do some "u-picking" - Valley Flora Farms http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/  

 

We got strawberries and also thornless blackberries which are enormous, much bigger than wild blackberries and very sweet. 

 

I've been jammin'!

And finally the reason for the much talked about delay, this last weekend Cape Blanco has been hosting the 3rd annual Cape Blanco Music Festival, where they play both kinds of music - Country & Western!!! 

http://capeblancofestival.com/

About 20,000 people descended on our sleepy part of the world and set up camp, completely nuts!! we didn't venture too far not wanting to get tangled up in that demon "traffic".  BUT then our lovely neighbors across the way had managed to "score" some free tickets for the last night we decided to go along and see what it was all about!

To summarize, it consisted mostly of cowboys, short shorts, dust, deck chairs, food, honey buckets (portable loos), cowboy hats.. lots and lots of cowboys hats, cowboys, campers and again short shorts and cowboy boots!

What a laugh, it was great fun, mostly as it is the biggest gathering of people that we have been to for a long time, remember we live in a town of an official population of 1,190 people, give or take a few neighborhoods!  so I was able to get my yearly fix of people watching and standing in line all over and done with in one night!

Kenny Chesney (famous to us non-C&W fans for being married to Renee Zellweger for about 2 months) was the headline act, he put on a great show and despite not knowing hardly any of his songs I did recognize this catchy tune!!

Here's a tune for you Dad!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWu4aynBK7E

 

 

We had a really fun night, but it is safe to say that these Rockers won't be moving over to the dark side anytime soon....