4+1+1
Four kids, one dentist, and only one cavity and that in a baby tooth! Hoooot! AND it rained! Not as much as it could have, perhaps, not as much as we need, but it rained.
And when I went to milk the sun was back out low in the west, shining up the west flowing creek's little holler and onto the big mountain to our east, the mist rising from the water. I was in shadow. By the time I finished milking, the sun was no longer on the land but only in the sky. A cat sat on the top of the gate. The pig (still only one) grunted and squealed although he'd already had his supper. The dog in the garden barked. The bats weren't out yet, or the stars, or the lightning bugs. The equines and the caprines came over the hill to the salt block.
Supper, just a simple sandwich, awaited.
The water is low enough that there is no laundry now, nor any bathing. We save dish water to flush with. We bathe and do some laundry in the creek. We manage. We watch for a hurricane.
And yet there is great pleasure in bathing in the creek. The cow wonders where I am wandering to after dark on my way down and back up. A bucket of water over the head or down the back always takes my breath away, but always feels so good. And I never feel quite so clean as after a creek bath. Almost like a baptism. A way to die to expectations and awake to something quite different.
6 comments:
that sounds wonderful.
it is along time since I was without mains water, at that time I worked on a farm fed from a spring,there were four cottages rented out and 'legally' they had to get put on the mains water, it was a big job and cost the farmer a lot of money. she never put her house on mains. I think the 'legally' part was that the water went into a holding tank in which the odd small creature would drown and have to be fished out. I checked it every couple of days so the dead things weren't in there that long and it never killed me, also the farmer, a fine fine woman, live to a ripe old age.
There is no "mains" (we'd call that public, or city) water here. They are trying to get it. I can't see where it would ever be cost effective (we're a long way out, and few people live here) and we're rooting for a collapse of society before it actually gets done, but if it comes by, we'll not give them right of way or hook up.
But why oh why would people rather drink chlorine than a few bacteria -- that your gut needs anyway. Like my raw milk, I think of it as living water.
Water is one of the things that we "need" power to get up here. But with the spring low (it still flows, and we are not OUT of water, just on severe conservation), we've thought of several ways to have hand or ram pumped water on this hill. Which I find interesting. We never set out to be "off the grid" but may well end up that way.
Chive and I are talking about rainwater cisterns when we get the hell out of here. I mean, ahem, when we finally move. That was fairly common here in the 1930s and 40s, that a house would be constructed with a huge underground cistern to collect rain for household needs. It makes sense, because the groundwater won't kill you but it tastes god-awful and smells like the lake of fire.
Rainwater is a wonderful resource. We'd have to wash our roof though! LOL! We have springs and creeks and a if we dug a well, it wouldn't have to be all that deep, even up here on this hill, and while there is some sulfer water here, you never know if your well will be sulfer until you dig it.
the heat broke up here.
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