My younger daughter and I started talking about what we wanted to do over the next while, both shorter and longer term. We got so into it, we ended up walking around the outer yard to talk about it more!

One of the stops we made was in the pump shack, where we tested out the old hand pump.

Much to my surprise, we soon had water flowing! I took video while my daughter started pumping. This confirms to me that all we need are new leathers for it to work properly. It shouldn’t take that long for water to start flowing again, once it had already started. It should stay primed and water should start flowing almost immediately.

Yes, the whole pump moves as the handle is pumped. It spins in place. I asked my brother about this, and he tells me this is because it is designed to basically float, allowing for the rise and fall of the water table. A neighbour of ours had the same system, but when they dug a new well and got indoor running water, they closed off the old well – I can’t remember how exactly that was done, but in the spring, when all the snow was melting and the water table rose, their pump ended up going through the roof of their pump shack!

After we ran water for a while, I even gave it a taste, and it tastes better than our household tap water. We really need to get our house well water tested, but we would need to do the full testing to find out what’s going on with it, which is out of our budget. Plus, once the samples are collected (full testing needs 2 samples in different sizes), we’d have to get it to a lab in the city within 24 hours. The sterile containers to collect the samples are, I believe, available in one of the larger towns in our municipality, but I’d have to confirm that. A fair amount of logistics is required for us to get the water tested, simply because of where we live. The full test, however, would include coliform, E. coli, HPC, Nitrogen-Nitrates and Nitrogen-Nitrites, total dissolved solids, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, manganese, zinc, iron, Chloride sulfate, pH, hardness, conductivity, arsenic, boron, barium, fluoride, uranium, lead and copper – and the cost for all that has almost doubled since I first looked into it, 5 or so years ago. The basic test for just coliform and E. coli is just $30, but there are 7 different levels of testing available, including the total testing for everything.

Anyhow…

The important thing, though, is knowing we do have back up water, if something ever happens to our household water.

My daughter and I went through most of the old shacks and outbuildings, and into the barn, looking at the various materials strewn about. There are SO many old doors and windows, it’s mind boggling.

What started this all was my daughter asking what we needed before we could get some sheep or goats, and where we would set them up. We also talked about the trees that need harvesting, and the old shed with the collapsed roof that still needs to be dismantled. My daughter, it turns out, really dislikes working in the garden, doesn’t feel she’s good at it, and would much rather do other stuff. So for the next while, she’ll focus on harvesting and processing the dead trees and dismantling the old shed. The lumber from there can be used to build an animal shelter. The lumber used to frame it is still good, and the old cladding, which is very weathered and rotting, covers wider boards, protecting them enough that those should be useable, too.

I had originally thought we’d build our outdoor kitchen where the shed with the collapsed roof is, or right in front of it, but we now know that area is lower, collects water and the ground gets really soft. The other area I considered was next to the pump shack, facing the “driveway”. The old fuel tanks are still there, and we have no reason to move them. The outdoor kitchen is going to be 20’x20′, and those tanks would be in the way. There is, however, enough space behind the pump shack, between it and the old chicken coop. We just have to get it cleaned up of old tires and appliances still sitting there.

We also looked at the old chicken coop. This is a log building that still has its roof, though that is damaged. The original roof is wood shingled, and it had been covered with … tin? … corrugated sheets. I don’t think corrugated is the right word, but I don’t know what it’s actually called. Unfortunately, as with so many other areas, trees were allowed to grow right against the building. One had branches that scraped across the roof in the wind, which eventually tore off several of these metal sheets, destroying them and damaging the roof beneath, which now has holes in it, and the weather gets into the “attic” portion. We have other metal roof sheets like this that we can salvage from another collapsed shed by the barn, but have no way to safely get up there. We would need scaffolding, but the scaffolding my brother remembers being here is gone.

Still, we want to salvage this building. The log walls are still pretty solid. This building had been used as a summer kitchen, before my parents bought the property converted it to a chicken coop. It had electricity wired to it for lights, and heat lamps for the chicks. When my parents stopped having chickens, no one cleaned out the coop, so it’s quite a mess in there, and there are some things that were tossed in for storage, too.

We could potentially clean it up and fix it up. The whole building is slowly sinking. Instead of being on a concrete or rock foundation, it’s on giant wooden beams, and those are both sinking and rotting away, but they are also why the building is sinking evenly, and not twisting. The roof, however, is also dropping, to the point that the door had to be taken off entirely for us to be able to get in.

So that’s a project my daughter will work on as well; clearing up around the old chicken coop, first, then working inwards. Mostly, though, we have to cut back the trees some more – I’d already done some of that a few years back, but these are maples, so they’re growing back.

We’ll have to do the same around the pump shack, but one old stump has been sending out useable suckers. It’s basically been accidentally coppiced. We can maintain that. More material for wattle weaving! 😁 We also talked about what we can do to fix up the old pump shack. The exterior cladding it starting to rot and pieces are falling off – and on this building, there is no inner layer of boards the cladding is covering. It’s directly attached to the open wall joists, as you can see in the Instagram video. The concrete floor is cracking, but the bones of the structure are still sound, so we’ve got ideas on how to fix and maintain it.

We also went around the warehouse, which used to be my late brother’s workshop. We could seriously use that building for a workshop ourselves, but it’s completely full of my parent’s stuff. There’s basically two short paths among the stuff, and we can’t get to the back of it at all. My mother is still obsessed with her stuff in there, and is so worried someone will steal it. At the very least, though, we need to get the old mattresses to the dump, as well as the bags and bags of old clothing. She had suggested we have a garage sale, which I will not do, but she did approve of my suggestion that we could try selling things online, instead. That would be one way to help pay for the things that need to be done around here! That, however, would require going through all those boxes and seeing what is actually worth selling, and what is just junk.

But I digress!

It was around the warehouse that we decided on a place we could build animal shelters. My daughter is interested in sheep, for their wool (she wants to process and spin yarn). I would like a couple of milk goats, partly for their use in permaculture, partly because my family are lactose intolerant, and they can drink goats milk without getting sick.

We did talk about getting chickens, but both my daughters are hesitant about that. The problem is, they have friends with pet chickens, and their chickens are always getting sick. They think if we get chickens, they’ll get sick all the time, too, and we’re very unlikely to take a chicken to a vet. In a way, I understand this, but I think chickens raised outdoors would be much hardier and healthier than chickens raised as pets. Honestly, I’d be more concerned about sheep, goats or pigs needing vet care.

Yeah, I’d like a couple of pigs, too. Partly, all these animals animals are an important part of regenerative practices, and would go a long way in helping us to reclaim and improve our soil, with each contributing in different ways, and partly, they are a food source. Get a couple of piglets in the spring, send them out for processing in the fall, and have a freezer full of meat! I suppose we could get a steer and do the same thing, but I don’t think we’re up to an animal that big. Mostly, though, we need grazing animals for the outer yard. There’s no way we can mow all of it; it’s too rough in places. The overgrown areas are a fire hazard. A controlled burn would fix that, but with so many outbuildings, that would be very risky. Grazing animals would take care of that problem for us.

So my daughter is going to focus more on harvesting and processing the dead spruces for me to build raised beds, dismantle the shed and salvage materials to build animals shelters, as well as the outdoor kitchen and her smithy that she wants to build. I’ll focus more and gardening and building garden structures, and maintaining the yards. There will be crossover, of course, as we help each other out on the big stuff, but it’s clarified with each other what our areas of focus will be.

All in all, this made for a grand Mother’s Day! Well… except for all the wood ticks. We were picking those off our clothes constantly, and had to shower when we got back inside!

However, the three racks of ribs that have been slow roasting in the oven are now down, so it’s time to start focusing on our Mother’s Day dinner!

Mmmmmm….

The Re-Farmer