A Busy Day at The Farm

This little guy greeted me at the barn door when I went to get the ladder!

The day started out pretty slow yesterday. I decided to call the phone company to see if they could check to see why we have no service. She sent the request to the technical department and they did whatever booboo they do in the back on the…I don’t know…computers maybe? She said she would call me back when she knew something. Then, as soon as Mr. FixIt got here around lunch time things started hopping.

He brought the tools I needed. The first thing we did was hook up the old phone he brought from our house, but it didn’t work any better than the other two I had here. Pretty soon, the phone company called back and said they would have to send a technician out. So we moved on to the next job.

We gathered up our tools and headed to the cellar house to work on the pump. First, we pumped air into the bladder inside the tank. Then we opened the top of the pump and poured in almost exactly six and a half gallons of water till the water came up to the top. We hurried and put the connectors back together and flipped on the pump and in just a few seconds, you could here the timbre of the pump that let us knew it was drawing water from the well. Hurrah!

Once the pump built up enough pressure to turn off, I went inside and opened a faucet in the kitchen sink to bleed the air from the lines. Wow! It’s been a long time since the well was used so water sat in those old pipes for at least six months or so. The water that came out looked like charcoal. Ugh! I let it run till the pump kicked on again and when the water was running clear, I filled up the empty jugs we use for priming the pump.

While I was filling the water jugs, I heard a big thud up in the cellar house. As soon as that happened, a whole bunch of air came gurgling through the faucet and the water turned dark again. I think we must have hit an air pocket in the well and it jerked the pipe and stirred up the sediment. I waited for the water to clear again, but by this time, the water coming out of the faucet had reduced to a trickle. There was so much sediment coming through, it clogged up the little screen filter in the faucet. So I turned it all off and took every faucet screen aerator off and cleaned them well. Now we were in business!

The next chore was to take the exhaust pipe off the hot water heater and clean it out and make sure there weren’t any bird nests in it. Once it was cleaned, we put it all back together and attached it securely to the house. We didn’t have any duct tape so Mr. FixIt ran over to the next little town that has a couple of stores and got what we needed. When he came back, he taped up the joints to seal them. There are still a couple of things to do to get it just right, then I can light the hot water heater and we’re back in business!

Right about then, the phone repairman pulled into the driveway I was happy to hear it wasn’t something inside. He started tracing his way back. The first box was fine. The box across the road was fine. So he had to drive to the next box. He was gone for a good half hour, but when he came back….we had phone service AND internet. Yay!

While Mr. FixIt stowed his tools in the truck, I cleaned the washing machine and ran it through a cycle, I was wearing leggings when we worked on the exhaust pipe and I had to sit down on that wet, muddy ground in order to see what I was doing. I worked for a while with a wet hiney, but as soon as I got the chance, I cleaned the washer and threw those dirty things in that first load.

Everything works like a charm. Mr. FixIt gave me a smooch and off he went back home to hold the fort down there. I fixed supper and ate out on the front porch. It was just a lovely, lovely day. Not too busy…not too hectic…just the two of us fiddling around and making things work. I texted Beans with an update and told her what we’d accomplished and that was that. It started raining just before 8:00pm and that was my signal to put everything away for the day and write my post. It was a good thing, too because I was pretty much done. My back had the last word!

I didn’t get a lot of pictures yesterday. I was too busy working. But here’s what I have. 1) The old road up to the top of the hill where the back of the farm is. 2) LOTS of milkweed shoots means food for the Monarchs. 3)Tons of Mayapples grow in the underbrush. 4) The creepy crawly dark place under the front porch. It has a wire gate in front of it to keep the critters from taking up residence down there. 5 & 6) What day would be complete without a snapshot of my meals for the day? I really only eat twice a day plus snacks. Brunch was the second half of my baked potato fried in a tiny bit of butter along with a big mushroom and a couple of scrambled eggs and some colorful peppers. Dinner was skinless boneless chicken thighs on top of a chopped salad. Sooooo good!