Happy Birthday Nik!

We had a wonderful day! It was Nik's birthday but he's waiting to have his big celebration until his father can visit. So instead we just behaved like lazy folk and unpacked boxes most of the morning.

In the afternoon we planted the apple trees, blueberry, raspberry, strawberries, some catnip and a tiny Yarrow. It's supposed to be fairly warm (for winter) all week so they might have time to get rooted before it gets to cold. I put thick layers of hay around each and on top of the strawberries.

We further investigated the mysterious underground structure and believe it to be the septic lagoon. I've personally never seen such a thing, it's concrete and has concrete supports. But it's filled with murky, sewer-looking water. It didn't stick tho. All the lagoons I've seen were basically sewer ponds above ground. It's an odd thing to be sure. there is what looks like a tiny lagoon of the type I'm used to, just a few feet from the underground thing and it has two pipes that i believe might be for run off. If the thing is a lagoon it's much fuller than it seems like it should be for one week of flushing twice a day but I cannot think it would be anything else. We'll have to investigate further another time.

We also put the mail box back up. It was knocked down when we moved in and I put it back up once already but the road grater knocked it down again. I'm hoping the mail people will let us move it to our side so we can put up the fancy wooden post and my big mail box. I'm afraid it will get destroyed if we put it where the old one is.

Thistle is starting to produce again, thankfully! still only about 1/2 a cup tonight but that double what she had last night. They seem very happy and healthy here and I think things will only improve all around :) I'm feeding the milk to the cats and chickens for now but will start keeping it again in a day or two. Buying organic milk and soy milk at the store is very expensive and probably has more additives than milk, organic or not.

We haven't gotten an egg since we moved either tho I have about 2 dozen left from before we moved. The poultry are still in the small chick pen but get out everyday for free ranging. There's a very nice chicken area in the back of the barn with 3 or 4 good nest boxes in place but there's a large hole in the wall that needs repairing and insulation torn up and strung all about. We've cleaned 7 trash bags of the stuff up and there's at least that many more left in the barn and stone house. Things are getting done tho and it's so much more rewarding because we know it's ours.

Speaking of being ours ... I had a piece of mail waiting when we moved in. It's a letter from the county assessor for me to fill out as a property owner :) Yes, it's all for taxes but it's still a most excellent thing.

Now I'm off to make some supper, big bowls of chili :)