If you've been around here for awhile, then you'll know that a long time ago (seven years, to be more precise), I decided to look into adding beekeeping to our Holler adventures. I attended a workshop and then have done nothing more about it since then. Interestingly, the guy (and his family) who taught the workshop is now our neighbor--they live on the ridge; we live in the Holler. Our families have become good friends, and they have a few hives on their property.
Earlier this year, I had once again asked Seth if we could think about beekeeping and if I could go ahead and order a Flow Hive. Much to my surprise (since he had repeatedly said "no" in the past), he said yes. So I immediately placed an order and it arrived rather quickly.
Seth and the boys worked on putting it together.
After it was built, I put some tung oil on it, as per the suggestion that came with the hive.
So, we had a hive. Now we just needed bees.
I wasn't quite sure how to accomplish that. Should we order a colony of bees and have them delivered via UPS? Should I put signs up around the neighborhood, "This way to rent-free, clean, new apartment living designed especially for bees"? Should I stand outside and yell, "Here, bees! Here, bees!" It was a bit perplexing trying to figure out our next course of action.
Remember the guy who had hives that lived up the road from us? A few weeks ago, I was at their house for a Bible study on a Friday afternoon, and Tina had again offered to "catch a swarm" for us if the opportunity arose. Soon after that conversation, her oldest son walked into the house and said, "Did you know there's a swarm of bees down at the end our lane?"
Not wanting to deny that bit of providence, we quickly concluded the Bible study, I rushed home to get the brood box and lid, and Tina suited up (and also suited up one of her sons and Kieran).
We met up at the end of their lane, near the tree where the bees were swarming. From what I've learned, bee swarms don't stay in one place for very long, so we just had a small window of time to catch them (just a few hours).
Tina got in position and proceeded to catch the swarm, with the help of her son Elijah (who was not suited but only suffered one sting in the process).
After the bees were in the box, Tina put the lid on, and then told me to return that evening to pick it up and bring it home. Really? I just put the box in my car and drive it home? Doesn't that seem . . . um . . . dangerous, fool-hardy, and like a really, really bad idea?
But, since they are the bee experts, I trusted them and returned later that evening, after it was dark. Sure enough, all the bees were in the box, and I very carefully placed a strip of tape across the opening. Then somehow I maneuvered it up and into the back of my car. I very carefully closed the door, drove back to our place, and very carefully maneuvered the box into the spot we had fixed for it, inside the chicken fence.
We put it in there because we thought the chickens could keep the grass around it short, so we wouldn't need to weed whack around it. And also so that they could eat any of the hive beetle larva that may fall out of the hive in the future, thus providing a nice symbiotic relationship.
As I look at it now, the set up seems a little rickety. We may need to fix that in the future.
For a few reasons, I've opened the hive and worked in it a couple times. It was actually much less stressful than I thought it would be. This bee suit makes me brave. I feel like I should start naming the bees.
And so now we wait. Let the Apis Adventures begin!
Last year, I mentioned that we had a suicidal chicken. One of the new chickens recently began to join the suicidal one on her forays outside the fence. We hadn't clipped the wings of the new ones and one red chook (she was smaller and lighter than her sisters) was taking advantage of that and jumping over the fence to forage in the woods and the rest of our yard. She was taking her life in her own wings, and we never got around to stopping her by clipping her wing.
In fact, this was a video I took of her when she forgot how to get back in the yard. I take food out to the girls at night when I close up their coop, and she would get excited to get the food and couldn't remember how to get back inside so I would need to coax her back in.
Alas, last night, when Seth and the boys went out to put the chickens away, they found her just outside the fence, unmoving (i.e., she was dead). We don't know what happened to her. She didn't have any obvious signs of trauma on her and there were no signs around her that she had been attacked. She hadn't been acting sick lately, either.
Unlike, say, this black one.
Notice that her tail feathers are down -- not up like the other chickens' feathers. She didn't have much energy and eventually we found her dead in the coop a few weeks ago.
The red one that is recently deceased, however, had not been acting that way. Her demise was a surprise and a shock to the boys, who were sad.
Since Seth was home at the time, he determined to bury her. Call me heartless and cruel (or maybe lazy), but I don't take such care when I find dead chickens -- I toss them over the fence into the neighbor's yard (the house has been foreclosed on and no one lives there any more).
At any rate, the boys were sad as they helped Seth turn her into garden fertilizer (we like to recycle as much as possible in the Holler).
Kieran said the eulogy for the chicken, "I want to remember all the good times we had together." (Those mainly consisted of him watching the chickens wander around the yard.)
And Cael placed a rock and some flowers over her final resting place.
As they mourned the loss of another chicken, I let them be sad for a bit. In a way, I want them to feel the weight of what our sin (in a general sense) has brought about. We talked, again, about the reason chickens die -- because Adam and Eve sinned and we are living under the curse God placed on His creation as a result of that sin. That the God-decreed punishment for sin is death and that sin has affected the entire creation (Romans 8). And that our hope of salvation from death and eternal separation from God comes through repentance and faith in Jesus, what He did on the cross on our behalf, and His resurrection. And that we look forward to a new heaven and earth, when the curse will be no more and we will be able to enjoy God (and, most likely, chickens) forever.
Somehow, this little guy has turned into a big eight-year-old (he turned seven just the other day). It was just earlier this year that, when he learned he would be turning eight, said, "WHAT?!? But I don't want to!" Since then, he has embraced his eight years post-womb and happily tells people his age.
He enjoys playing DJ with the various CDs we have and our CD player. He also enjoys finding a song he likes and setting it to play on repeat.
He loves attending our local elementary school (we enrolled him this school year) and being around all the friends. He's learning to read and is continuing to figure out math and numbers.
For his birthday party, we had the traditional peanut butter pie (with a manufactured "8" topper)--one of his favorite pies (pumpkin is the other one)--since he's not a cake guy.
When we go to the library, he alternates checking out the same two tractor anthologies so we thought we'd get him his own book to keep for his birthday. He still likes weed wackers and has added augers to his list of YouTube videos he watches. Landscaping equipment and any large truck/machine fascinate him, along with vacuum cleaners (including Roomba).
He also has a love/hate relationship with spiders, so his fun friends wrapped the present they gave him in a spider.
His birthday gift from his grandparents (and us) was a trip to an indoor water park.
He loves being in the water and has really improved his swimming skills.
He likes to watch our chickens and play his instruments (piano, harmonica, didgeridoo). He has a big, infectious laugh that we love hearing and big heart that cares about others and about the Lord. We continue to thank God for giving us our boy! Happy birthday, buddy!
If you've read this blog for any length of time, it's likely you know that we have a cistern. This is our only access to running water to use with baths, the toilet, washing clothes, etc. And you'll also know that it leaks and we have been trying to figure out what to do about it for years.
Before I continue, however, let me answer a few questions I'm sure you'll have (because everyone we mention the situation to has the same questions).
What is a cistern, anyway?
A cistern is a large tank (made of cement, fiberglass, or plastic) that is, usually, set in the ground to collect runoff water, mainly from a roof. The water we use in our house comes from the sky via rain or snow. It's funneled from the gutters on the roof through downspouting into an underground tank
Can't you drill a well?
We have two wells (dug by the previous owner) on our property--neither of which is functional. One was dug and hit a natural gas pocket. The other tapped into a water flow that was full of minerals and yields about 250 gallons of water per week, which isn't enough to supply our water needs.
Can't you tap into city water?
We live in a holler with a one-lane road for access. The lane is bounded by a large hill on one side and small creek on the other. It would be massively cost-prohibitive to dig through the hill, impossible to dig up the lane, and the DNR wouldn't like it if we dug up the creek in order to lay the pipes necessary to tap into the city water.
So, what's wrong with your . . . what did you call it . . . cistern?
It was made of cement, with top and bottom sections. The top had shifted somewhat off the bottom and had large cracks running through it. So water would leak out of it . . . and also into it. It was only holding about 500 gallons at a time, so unless we were continually supplied with rain, we had to use our truck every week to get water or call the guy who hauls water to bring us a load of water. He brings about 1600 gallons but since the cistern leaks, most of that was gone before we could use it. Lately, we were hauling water once a week (a 90-minute round trip for Seth in the truck) or calling the water guy (to the tune of $40 for each delivery). And lately, we've been calling the water guy since the brakes were bad on our own water-hauling truck and Seth hadn't had an opportunity to fix them.
Can't you just put a liner in it or seal it somehow?
We have looked into all the options available for repairing a leaky cistern and exhausted each one for one reason or another. A few years ago, we had it Thorosealed. Since then, Seth has plastered it with a foam sealer and has done quite a few other things that I can't even remember. The patches and fixes just don't hold water (get it?) and we are continually left without any.
Wow, that sucks. So, what are you going to do about it?
Yes, thanks. Back to the point of this post. Back in 2012, we got an estimate to have a new concrete cistern installed to the tune of about $9,000. That was a bit much for us, so we checked into various other kinds of cisterns (poly tanks, fiberglass) and found that, because of the soil in our area (mainly clay), the only type of cistern that we can really get is one made of concrete. So, we were back to the drawing board.
When we got the initial quote for a new cistern a few years ago, I had checked the phone book to see if there was someone else in the area who installed cisterns and found that it had no "cistern" category. I didn't know where to go from there, so over the years, we've tried these various other solutions, checking into other cistern possibilities but we kept running into the same issues. Occasionally, we would ask someone in the area if they knew of anyone who installed cisterns (because, c'mon, we're in a very rural area and surely someone is a professional cistern installer around here). Please refer to the questions above for the resulting conversations.
In November, we were getting fairly exasperated with our water situation and tired of dumping money into a failing cistern. During one of the water deliveries that were becoming more frequent, I mentioned to Charles, the water hauler, about our dilemma. When I told him the price we had been quoted, his jaw dropped, and he said, "Oh, no, no, no, honey. That's just not right. Why, my son and a friend of his installed a cistern just down at the end of your lane a few years ago for just a couple thousand dollars."
WHAT?! I thought to myself. YOU MEAN THE WATER HAULER HAS KNOWN ALL THESE YEARS WHERE WE COULD GET A NEW CISTERN AND WE'VE NEVER ASKED HIM? I really did yell that to myself. How in the world had we not had this conversation with him before?!
After I picked up my jaw from the ground, I asked him for more details, he gave me the name and number of the plumber who installed the cistern and, as soon as I got back into the house, I gave the guy a call. He said he was busy and probably wouldn't get to it for awhile. Seriously?!
But, I now knew where to look for cistern-installers -- the plumbing section of the yellow pages. I got the phone book, grabbed a pen, and began going down the list of local plumbers. My (multiple) conversations usually went like this:
Me: Hi, I'm wondering if you install cisterns.
Plumber: A what?
Me: A cistern.
Plumber: A kitchen sink?
Me: No, a cis-tern. Cistern.
Plumber: What's that?
Me: I'll take that as a "no" then.
A few said they used to do such a thing but didn't any longer. Some said they didn't but here's a number to try of someone who might. I spent several hours calling around, crossing off name after name. I even went through the list of "septic tank installers," thinking there was surely some similarity between installing a cistern and a septic tank.
I found a manufacturer of cisterns in the area but they couldn't give me the name of anyone who would install it. And Seth didn't think he was really up for the job of installing it himself (despite the fact that BIL Nate was ready and willing to hop in an excavator and dig a hole for it). I may or may not have have said to him, "C'mon, it can't be that hard to install a cistern, can it? Don't you just dig a hole, drop it in the ground, and hook it up?" He may or may not have just looked at me and raised his eyebrow.
One of my last phone calls was to a plumber named Bob. His wife answered the phone and I left a message with her. Bob was out hunting but would give me a call back later (hashtag smalltownlife). A day or two later, he did, and much to my delight, he knew how to install a cistern. Hope was on the horizon.
A few days later, he and the guy who excavates for him came out, looked at our set up, asked the above questions, and then said he would give us a bid for the job. Kieran, meanwhile, asked the excavator guy why he was missing his two front teeth. "This is what happens when you don't brush your teeth, kid," he said. I appreciated that the cistern installation also came with a real-life hygiene lesson for the boys.
Bob said, not including the cistern itself, he could do the job for $3200 -- that included excavating the area, hooking up the plumbing, covering it all back up, and hauling away the extra dirt. Wow. That sounded so much better than the $9000 originally quoted.
So, I called the cistern manufacturer and scheduled a delivery of a 3,400-gallon cistern a few weeks later when Bob said he would be available. And then, when Charles again came to bring us another load of water, I so very proudly told him that I had found a guy to install the cistern and his name was Bob X.
Charles' mouth dropped open and he said, "Oh, no, no, no, honey. Not Bob X! No, no, no. That just won't do. I've seen his work and dealt with him before and you do not want him installing your cistern. He does not do good work. I just can't stand to see someone taken advantage of. No, no, no. Why don't you give Lil' Brian a call -- the guy who lives down at the end of your lane. He does this type of thing all the time. I'll have my son give him a call for you."
WHAT?! I thought to myself. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! I CAN NOT BE HEARING THIS RIGHT NOW!! THERE IS A CISTERN-INSTALLER RIGHT DOWN THE ROAD FROM US??!!?
After I picked up my jaw from off the ground, I thanked him for his kindness in looking out for us and went inside, debating whether to call and cancel Bob. Finally, I did. And then I tried to figure out the best way to get in touch with Neighbor Brian.
The next day, a truck roared up to our house and out hopped Brian. Charles' son had indeed called him and let him know we were in dire straits and in need of his help. He took a look at what was going on, asked us the above questions, and then said he would do it and could get to it on the day I'd originally scheduled the cistern to be delivered. He came out a day or two later to dig a test hole to make sure he wasn't going to hit bedrock and, thankfully, found nine feet of dirt sitting under our property.
The day the cistern was scheduled to be delivered, it rained. Apparently, it's not wise to dig a massive hole in your yard during a rain storm. So, we postponed the delivery and installation until the end of that week. I was beginning to think we just weren't meant to have a new cistern . . . .
Finally, the day arrived and Brian showed up to begin the excavation.
Soon enough, there was a giant gaping hole in the ground, next to our old cistern.
And then what to my wondering eyes should appear but a giant truck hauling a cement tank on its bed.
Our cistern had arrived. Maybe, just maybe, we actually would get a brand-spanking-new working non-leaking cistern after all.
The old cistern is under the small shed beside the truck.
Once the truck backed up to the waiting hole, this is what happened.
And then this:
And just like that, our new cistern was installed. Brian, Seth, and BIL Nate (who was visiting for his traditional Thanksgiving hunting trip) got down inside it, washed it out, and then Thorosealed it. That cured for a day, and they worked on hooking up the plumbing to the existing lines. They left a pipe going into the existing cistern so that it could backfill when the new cistern was full -- an extra water-storage tank, if you will.
And, finally, finally, finally, Brian backfilled the hole, and we were all set to begin collecting water and using our new cistern (he'll be back in the spring, after the dirt settles a bit, to finish covering it and haul away the rest of the dirt).
Charles returned to fill the tank, congratulated us on a job well done, and figured he'd worked himself out of a job -- since, hopefully, this cistern will hold water and we won't be needing his services as often.
Oh, and Brian's final bill for us? $762. (The tank itself was $2400.) Yeah. Who knew the neighbor down the street installed cisterns? WHO KNEW THE NEIGHBOR DOWN THE STREET INSTALLED CISTERNS?!?
PS -- The cistern was installed mid-December and we haven't had to have it filled since. #winnerwinner
