Something very disorienting happened today.

There was a knock at the door.

Which is one of those things that is so unexpected, it takes a moment for my brain to clue in and say, “oh… there’s a person at the door.” 😀

Turns out, it was the guy delivering the straw bale we had ordered. He had to leave the tractor in the driveway, hop the locked gate, and come knocking.

There’s a reason I asked for a call first! 😀 The guy delivering the bale was not the guy I bought it from, so he probably didn’t have my number. Not that he could have called us from his tractor, anyhow. 😉

I was really happy to see him, that’s for sure! It’s been snowing off and on, and the temperatures are dropping, so I really wanted to get that septic tank covered!

This time, I asked him to drop it off in the old garden area. You can see that the bale has been sitting for a year! After unwrapping it, I started trying to pull the straw down near that dark area, and found it half frozen and very wet.

Which is great, because the wet straw that’s already starting to decompose went straight onto the garden area, and some of the compost, right away. I even found a worm in it. LOL

This is where our septic tank is. Our system is very different from what is usual; instead of a gravity based system, ours has a smaller tank and pumps. There are pipes leading from the basement to the left of the tank in this photo. The tank has two chambers. Everything goes into the first chamber, then when it fills with liquid, there is an overflow chamber. When that fills, the liquid is pumped to a field out by the barn. The pipe for the outflow runs under the old kitchen, which is behind the septic lid in the photo.

All of these pipes are buried deep and, theoretically, we could go without covering any of this at all, but it’s not something we want to take a chance with. An extreme winter could freeze the ground far enough that the pipes would freeze, and if that happened, it could get really nasty in our basement! It would also cost many thousands of dollars to get it fixed. So spending $25 on a bale and covering it is really cheap insurance! 😉

Here is now it looks now! I added extra along the old kitchen foundation, just for a bit of extra insulation.

I’m leaving the tools with the bale for now, as we’ll be using it to insulate the old dog houses, probably in a couple of days.

While working on this, I had several very curious kitties checking things out. I expect the bale will also serve throughout the winter to keep little paws warm, and for burrowed nests, as well. 🙂 They were already quite keen on getting into it.

When I was done, I got a selfie with Susan.

She was not co-operative. LOL

Another thing off the list of things to get done before winter! 🙂

The Re-Farmer