Thanks Dad !!!

Our Blue Cattle Dog Tilly  and her mate Doug the Kelpie love to chase  a soccer ball. They will chase it all day every day all over the farm.They get to be a real nuisance at times pushing the ball into the middle of what ever project you happen to be doing at the time and expecting you to kick it or throw it for them..

We have a grey water pit at  the farm into which all out kitchen,bathroom and laundry grey water flows into. We then hook up a small petrol pump and pump the water from the pit  out onto the lawn and trees. It passes through a rudimentary grease trap before running into the pit.
The pit is quite deep, my husband can nearly stand up in it.
Well recently when Brian was pumping it out, the dogs were racing around crazy with their ball and it just happened to fall into the pit.I just love the following images, they were just too cute.

And then it was like...."Hey Tilly the ball has  fallen in, come and look"

And then...."oh dear what will we do"
I think they thought that if they watched hard enough and really willed it to happen, that the ball would just magically appear again.

I think it was about then that they realized that Dad was there and they began asking him to save it for them

 

So good old Dad came to the rescue and pulled out that dirty smelly old soccer ball out  of the grey water pit.

So there were two happy dogs ,once again playing with their old soccer ball.

Another time when Brian had just started  pumping it out, Doug the Kelpie was racing around chasing the ball and then he just disappeared. Suddenly Brian realized that he had fallen into the pit and had to quickly rescue him as the water level was quite high. It certainly scared him and he was very wary of it that day.
For safety reasons we always keep a heavy concrete lid on it, the only time it is removed is when it is being pumped out. Because we don't live there full time it doesn't have to be emptied as often as it will when we become full timers.
 Today is the end of Winter, with Spring just around the corner with the promise of new growth and colour, all we need is that ever evasive rain.
Until next time,
Cheers,
Jane.

Builders,we are not.!

My husband and I are not builders, we may have other talents, I love to can and take photographs..(.not necessarily talented at either of those activities) and my husband is a mechanical whizz, can just about fix anything. But builders,we are not.
We have brilliant ideas and plans in our heads of what we want, but it's just bringing those plans to fruition that is the problem.
There is so much up the farm that needs attention, and  as there is not  a lot of spare money around we decided  to bite the bullet and have a go at a few simple less important jobs ourselves.

We have a shed up the back of our house, long and rectangular,which houses the solar panels on the roof which powers our home, the power room is located in one end of this shed, the other end we wish to covert to my new laundry room(my old internal laundry room will become my new canning pantry( yay !!!).At the far left hand end of this shed is another  small external storage room and    an  internal extra toilet and basin. What we decided we would like to do was turn that little extra shed at the left hand side of the photo into an extra  outdoor shower room connected internally to that toilet and basin.This will be the very first stage, and I will follow up later on as the project progresses.

We have some wonderful friends who regularly come up to the farm and give their time  and effort to help us out and with hopefully four heads together, problem solving may be a liitle easier, and anyway the old saying "Many hands....."
The first job was to remove the exterior siding from the outside around the original door, then remove the back wall of the shed to create the new internal opening to the bathroom.

Next the siding that was the original internal wall was replaced as the new external wall if you get what I mean.

So far so good, the siding is old and caused numerous problems as it had to fit neatly into special shaped corner strips and many times it required all our hands to hold and balance while things were secured.
We are happy with the job so far, this was to just create the new external shell ready for the plumbing and lining stage which should follow before too long.The photo below, shows the wall finished and the view inside of the new shower room to be.

We have already purchased a tankless gas hot water service to  supply hot water to the shower and the new laundry, also have purchased a white 1.2mtx1.mt fiberglass shower  base to go on the floor and most of the plumbing supplies required. All we need is the time and manpower to complete the job.
This is never intended to be a five star bathroom facility, it is just an outdoor back up and as we have a lot of caravaning and camping guests, we thought it would be even better if they had their own basic bathroom facilities to use, and that it would then take a bit of pressure off the facilities in the house.
I will  update the progress with another  entry as we finally get onto the job and hopefully complete it.
So until we meet again,
take care everyone,
Cheers,
Jane .