Gifts for the Grandparents

As my belly gets bigger and more cumbersome (I now only have 6 weeks to go, give or take whatever Nicky decides), travel will be limited, so we decided to go and visit Abe's folks one last time before our family increases.

We split the trip into two days as we were all kind of sick and tired with Leo's cold. This is definitely the worst cold I have had (and still have, almost two weeks later) in a long, long time. And, in the spirit of family sharing, we left the grandparents with the gift of our germs... very sorry, Mo-mo and Po-po.

On the second day of our journey, Abe had some running around to do, so he left Leo and I at a MacDonalds. Now, this is normally an establishment we do not particularly favor, and have never been to in the 10 years we have been together, BUT it was right next to our motel AND it has a huge play area! It was all I could do to get Leo to eat some food before he ran delightedly to the maze of colored slides. He had a blast, especially when another little boy arrived and joined him. He was sorry to see papa return and say it was time to go, although there was a very large consolation: "We're going to Mo-mo and Po-po's".

Leo loves it at Jim and Vickie's. There are of course the horses, cows, chickens, fish, and the feeding thereof to keep him entertained. More thrilling though are the vehicles. There's the big bike with the basket on back, his little tricycle (which after an hour or two he had learned to ride - you can cycle at our place, but off-road mountain biking would be a fairer description of the activity), a red wagon which he wanted to hook up to every other vehicle, the four-wheeler. He was constantly pulling on either Jim or Vickie's arm to get them to go for a ride with him, and they usually acquiesced! In fact, it was generally a chore, and often ended in tears, to get him to come inside at all.

We had a great few days and are now back home, with what seems like a million things to do.

For more photos, click here.

Sick again

Leo has only ever been sick a handful of times, but two of those have come this year.

He started off with a high fever one day that went away without any other symptoms. Then a day later the cold came out. He spent a couple of days with stuffed nose and cough - mostly on my lap, in my arms or asleep. He seems a lot better today though and slept well last night, so looks like we might be past the hump (until we get it off course!).

I had to take this photo - even sick and stuffed up, he still manages to keep a good grip of the important things in life!

There's a couple of other photos and videos in 35th month. My favorite is when he becomes the chocolate cake monster (not sure where the monster came from, but I took it as a compliment to the new recipe I was trying out).

In separate Leo news, we went to visit some friends in a neighboring village, who have some small kids, and Leo had his first ever soda. Unfortunately, but very predictably, he loved it. His first reaction was "bla", but then he took another sip, then a gulp, then it was gone! He'll have to wait until we go back there to have his second taste.

Finished pantry

We finished off the last few details of the pantry this week - moulding and painting. Photos

We've done other bits and pieces, but one newsworthy thing is that we sold our tractor. The guy came and picked it up yesterday. We used it a little, but for the most part our property is too steep for a tractor without tracks. We decided it was best to sell it to someone who would use it more, so it's gone!

Wicking Beds

This weekend Abe got a couple of lads from the village to come and help him make two wicking beds (I am not much use with a pic and shovel at the moment).

A wicking bed is basically a box-type planter, which is watered from the bottom.

To build it, they:
- Dug into the ground a little, making sure the bottom was level.
- Buried 6 stakes, which mark the corners and middle of the box.
- Attached shade cloth to the inside of the stakes.
- Lined the bottom half of the box with black plastic and a vinyl tarp (to protect the plastic from being torn by rocks.
- Put a 4" drainage pipe (with holes along it) in bottom of box, and then put 4" PVC into it. This is where you water your plants from.
- Filled up bottom half of the box with gravel and sand.
- Filled up rest of box (where there is just shade cloth, no plastic) with compost.

You add water into the PVC pipe, which drains out into the gravel. The soil will then wick the moisture up to the plants. To wick well, it must have high organic content. It is highly efficient with water. We will also be adding a frame above that can hold either shade cloth or greenhouse plastic.

For more photos, click here.

Our gray water interior flower beds work on a very similar principle. As you can see by the photo, it seems to be working pretty well. Here are some more photos of them.

Pantry

Something kind of exciting for the nesting mother was the pantry we built this week. The entrance-way was designed to have a two-foot deep shelving unit in it, but it was never a priority. Well, we've now done it and I love it. So much space for extra, non-perishable foods. It'll be especially great this year when we do a lot more canning and have honey, etc.

We then made a little shoe rack and put up some hooks for jackets and hats. The entrance-way is now so clear and tidy. Just need to put up the finishing face boards, paint it, and seal its brick floor and it'll be another part of the house that is fully finished.

For more photos, click here.

Worm harvester 2.0

Back in August we made a worm harvester to make the job of separating our earthworms from the wonderful fertilizer they produce a lot easier. It worked pretty well, but there were some issues, like it was kind of shaky. So we remade it (a couple of times actually) to get a better version.

It now makes very easy work of the chore and is smooth and fast.

We'll be putting the how-to article here on the site within the week - just need to finish editing it. For photos, click here.

New trees

We just bought and planted 7 new trees - 4 cherries and 3 peaches. The cherries we planted in our orchard area, which has a drip irrigation system. The peaches are now within the garden fence, so that one day they can offer the vegetables some shade.

We are trying to start some new trees each year, especially as our water situation gets increasingly abundant. We already have some well established plum, apricot, cherry and apple trees. The apricot and cherry are now starting to bloom.

For more photos, click here.