Well part 1

The well has been drilled!!! But still no running water. Two rigs showed up, one had a giant drill and one had a water tank and pipes on it.

The rigs showed up around 9am and drilled and drilled and drilled until 3pm before they hit water.

My son thought it was all quite magnificent. They had to mix in some sort gel that made this gunky mud stuff that will not dry, its all over the yard. I'm not sure what to do with it. It has rained a couple of times but it won't wash away. My husband tried to scrape it up but its very heavy.

They well guys are coming back in a week to hook up the well pump and water tank. The water tank is pretty big and since we do not have a basement we had two options for tank placement. Outside and build an insulated/ heated structure around it or inside in the bathroom. The well guy thought it should for sure be inside. He said it will freeze and it will be very expensive to get a new tank. So we are going to listen to him, which means my lovely claw foot bath tub has to go and be replaced with a tiny shower. No more hot baths with Lush bath products and a glass of wine reading horror/scifi novels. I guess its better to shower at home than go to the truck stop to shower. My son loves taking baths too and giving his trucks a wash down. 

We finished laying the vinyl tiles by the front door.

The compost pit for the Humanure has been built. Its walls are built from old pallets with straw on the bottom. When the bucket is full it gets put out here to compost down. It takes about a year for everything to compost down. We also had to fence it off because my husband caught our pug in there digging around. Pugs are nasty.

Here is a link about compost humanure. http://humanurehandbook.com/hacienda.html

We are in this last ditch effort to get things done before winter settles in. Since its the upper Midwest we could be getting snow anytime. We need one more trailer load of wood, finish splitting and stacking the green wood from the five trees we had to take down, spray some insulation under the house and put up skirting as a wind break around the bottom.

Autumn

WOW! The leaves are so spectacular up here. I mean, they were nice in Minneapolis too but up here on my 5 acres I am surrounded by Maple, Birch, Oak and Poplar. When the weather is gray and a bit rainy the leaves colors are even more brilliant and stand out even more. My son and I went on a leave walk, he is almost three and I was trying to teach him some basic leaf identification, he mostly just cared about the colors.

A friend of mine gave me some equipment for harvesting sap to make maple syrup. I had to make a spray paint mark on a few of my maples so I can identify them in February or March when its time to tap them. I'm not that good at identifying trees based just on their bark yet. Wisconsin is the second largest maple syrup producer in the country, behind Vermont. Its pretty cool to go to the store and buy syrup from a place two towns away from me or be driving down the road and see signs for syrup for sale.

Our shed came too! My son was super excited to see the truck pull up and unload the shed and move it into place with a forklift.

This thing is almost the size of our house. I unloaded our temporary makeshift shed and loaded this baby up. We still need some major organization time in here to get the tools, garden tools, tree cutting tools, bikes and house storage set up.

This past weekend we took a trip back to Minneapolis for the fall comic book convention. Its pretty small but my husband really enjoys it. We handed out some of our Werepugs mini comics and he bought some other stuff too. I have to say I didn't get that homesick feeling going back like I got when I lived in Connecticut and would come back. Its so peaceful up here that the city seems sort of crazy. I do miss my friends and my job at the co-op. I use to work with some pretty funny and interesting people. Maybe I will feel different come January and I have cabin fever when I'm stuck in a 360 sq. ft. house with -20 degrees ranging outside.

Fire!

When we first bought our place back in 2012 we took a class in Ely, MN on how to build a Rocket Mass Heater. We knew we wanted to build one in our new place. We have not gotten around to building one yet. It was such a hurried move trying to make the cabin livable before Travis had to start his new job that we simply ran out of time. We are still planning on building a Rocket Mass Heater but not until spring. If you are curious about Rocket Mass Heater please check out the link below and research it for yourself. They are really awesome.

 http://www.ernieanderica.info/rocketstoves
 http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp










We went the least expensive route possible when we purchased our wood stove knowing that it will not be permanent. Not to mention in a 360sq ft house there isn't room for anything. (One of the cool things about a RMH is that you can shape the cob into additional seating.) We got a clearance priced stove, yes there are cheaper stoves on craigslist but they were huge and we just did not have room. My husband scored free tile form one of the tenants in his work building before we moved. We used the tile and built a fire proof base for the stove to sit on. We also got free cement board that was here when we bought the place.

There was also this beast of wood cook stove we got rid of. We are trying to locate ceramic electric fence tiles so we can hang cement board and tile what will be a heat proof wall. We also bought an electric baseboard heater that we will put on a timer so when the fire dies out over night the heater will come on to keep the place at about 60 degrees.

We have been cutting and stacking green wood for next year. Its sort of hard to find dry wood to burn this year. I guess you can buy a loggers truck load of it but we do not have the extra money to buy that much. We got a trailer full from an 80 year old man that likes to cut wood as a hobby. I think we need about 3 more trailer fulls before the -20 degree weather and snow sets in.