Homemade Halloween

After collecting milk jugs and other containers for a few weeks (thanks to my students for helping!) we got to work with some homemade Halloween decorations.

The ghosts and pumpkins along the driveway have votive candles inside that we can light up.  We've added another twenty or so of them.

Update:

We finally put votive candles in the jugs one night and I got a few pictures of them lit up.  I liked them a lot but I wish the votive candles would last longer.  I'm thinking those battery operated votive candles would be good but they're more pricey and I'm sure I'd forget to turn them off afterward.

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The Gold Mine On Our Property

When the plumber first came out this week to see what was going on and come up with a plan, we were walking around near the woods looking for a possible gray water pipe.  We didn't find one, but as we turned around to walk back to the house he looked down and saw the edge of a round piece of concrete.  A lid.

We have been over in this area 100 times and had never seen this thing, but now there was a piece that was partially uncovered.  

My imagination went wild as we had the boys bring us shovels, "What if it is a buried treasure?  Oh, if it's an underground bunker that would be so freaking cool.  If we find money, I'll split it with you."

We shoveled and dug for about 15 to 20 minutes and uncovered the lid completely.

We let our handyman do the dirty work of lifting up the lid.

No treasures.  No underground bunker with 50 year old canned goods.

Turns out that this must be a drainage area for the water that seeps into the ground around the house.  It must get routed here, fill up this chamber, and then leak out when it is full.  We aren't sure why there are brick inside, unless someone wanted to be able to stand inside of it and not drown.

Mystery is solved, and the lid was put back on.  

Plumbing in an old house

We've been having issues with our kitchen sink for awhile, but it got really bad this week when it completely stopped draining.  We'd had the drain snaked a few weeks ago when it was slow to drain and that didn't help.  So then we had the septic tank pumped early this week, and that didn't help.  It took a day for our handyman to be able to come check things out again and he crawled up under the house in our crawl space.

The black pipe is our kitchen pipe

He found that the pipe that was coming out of the sink came down, but then arched up, declined again, arched up again, and then dropped again to the main pipe lines.  His theory was that there wasn't enough water pressure and the water and debris was getting stuck in those areas that went up.  He wanted to cut that pipe out, put a new pipe in, and set it up to have a consistent decline to the main line.

I was doubtful.  I figured if there was water in that pipe, it should still flow out simply because there was so much.  I thought for sure that after he fixed the decline, it would still need to be snaked.

For two days we had to hand wash dishes and then scoop the water out of the sink with a pitcher and take it outside to dump it.  Time consuming, annoying, and just gross.

The handyman was able to come over this morning and he got to work in the basement.  It turns out that there is another room in the crawl space that I didn't know about that goes under the kitchen area.  He was down there for a few hours before he told me to turn on the kitchen sink.  Sure enough, the water flowed right down the drain.

He was right!

I got some pictures of the pipes that he pulled out of the basement because, quite frankly, it was disgusting.



It was gross looking, but really I just wanted to know what it was that had built up and clogged it.

The pipe was completely blocked.  There was no light that I could see through this section and it was only about 3 feet long.  

We knocked some of it out just to figure out what it was and the pieces that came out were solid, like a block of cheddar cheese.  Some of it has definitely been in there for many years (verified by the handyman).  

First thing that I did was run over and press the button to start the dishwasher.

The History of our Homestead

I've been trying to find the owners of our property since before we closed on the sale.  The last name was fairly common and other than finding information that the woman passed away a few years earlier, I've never been able to find anything.

Then last winter the neighbor told me that the son of the owner lives in a community nearby.  I did some google searching and found his wife on Facebook and sent her an email.  It went to her "other" folder and she never saw it.  Then, a few days ago she joined a community Facebook group that I'm in and I posted in the group and tagged her just to tell her that I'd emailed her.

She replied immediately that her husband (SW) and daughter were excited to hear about the property and that they would come by.  We arranged to have them come by today and when they showed up, I found out that she hadn't told her husband where they were going and this was hard for him.  I really felt for him.

SW was very friendly and just gave off such a good vibe.  They stayed for about an hour telling me all kinds of fascinating information that I would have never known.  I've recently started researching my own grandmother's history and family in West Virginia and learning about the history of my home and the families that are tied to it is just another amazing discover.

The property next door used to have a large house.  I was told this house was torn down just two months before I moved in.  I found out today that the house was actually a school house many years ago.  Back during the time when black boys and girls were not allowed to go to the local public schools, they would come to school next door to my home, in a two story school house.  The school house had a tall cinder block tower with a large bell that rang.  The tower is not there anymore, but the cinder blocks are on the ground where it once stood.  The house also had a well,  not a modern day well, but a hole in the ground where a bucket was lowered to pull water up.  Their septic system drained on my property, where my current garden is.  The people who lived there were related to SW as they were great-great-grandparents (or maybe a couple more greats.)  This house was the summer home for the relatives when they came to town.

Years later, SW's grandparents convinced SW's parents to move here and they finally did.  SW and his father dug out the basement, he told me about how they had to tear a hole in the basement wall when they had a new well dug and the water holding tank needed to be put inside the basement.

He told me that his mother had a garden in the same place that my garden currently is.

I showed him the old wood signs for Bennett Elementary that we found in the woods and he said that his father was an engineer and helped design and build that school.  He had even gone with his father to the school.  I found online that there was an original Bennett Elementary built in 1909, but a new one was built in 1969 and this is the one his father had helped to build.  In 1996 another replacement school was built and so the one that his father had helped with is no longer around.

He told me that the chimney was always leaking and so a new one was built, but he asked if the cast iron stove was still in the house.  It is not here, but I have found pieces of one in the woods.

He also gave me history about the eminent domain issues and that they had won the right to preserve the land and the rural crescent years ago but then a property owner a few properties away made a deal with the developers to let them use his land to build a road to the land they wanted to build upon.  I also learned about other relatives and distant relatives and properties around us.

He said that next time he will go for a walk with us through the woods, where a faint trail still exists, to one of the neighboring properties.

SW's daughter is beautiful, his wife was also a lovely person, and they all just seemed like a great family.  He wasn't ready to come into the house as he had a lot of sad memories about leaving the property and I respected that and I hope that there will be a "next time" like he mentioned.  I hope that he can feel some sense of comfort in knowing that we live here as compared to someone who might tear everything down and start over to just sell to a developer.

Ninjas in a Half-Shell

The other day we were driving on a back road in some property behind our own property.  I was trying to find a road that I've seen on google maps, but have never seen in person.  We weren't far down the road when I slammed on the breaks.

The little guy was just trying to cross the road.

We'd already driven past another car and I knew there would be more cars coming down this path so I told the oldest that we should move him to safety.

Probably not a picture he'd like shown since he was mid-blink

Once the turtle was safely across the road, he jumped back in the car and we continued on our way.  :)

Silkie Sue, What Are You Up To?

SilkieSue's youngest babies are getting bigger.  They're no longer tiny puff balls, in fact, as I watched one squeeze out of the chicken run today, I realized they wouldn't be able to fit through very much longer.

We thought these were the last five chicks that would come from Clyde, and we were hoping one would end up being a rooster that looked (and acted) like Clyde.  

But it looks like one of our newer roosters may have gotten to a girl about a month ago....

I hadn't even considered that any of the eggs could have been from one of the other roosters, but there is no way that this white chick came from Clyde.

I also noticed that SilkieSue's back feathers are finally starting to grow back in, over a year after they were broken off by Clyde.

 And then I went back to the coop tonight to count the birds.  I saw SilkieSue sitting up on the roost and I thought this was strange so I looked down in the corner where she's been staying with the babies.

I was missing a chick so I looked back up at SilkieSue.

How the heck did she get that chick up there?!

Everything is growing

The guinea keets are almost adults now.  They aren't quite the same size as the two guinea that we had left, but they are definitely getting there.

Carrie is as prissy as ever.

And the pure bred Buff Orpington roosters are gorgeous.

Just a few little picture updates.

Hickory Horned Devil Caterpillar - Yikes!

The oldest found this THING in the goat pen today.

Even RebaSue was a bit scared!

A couple birds came close and attempted to take a peck at this thing, but they'd quickly give up and walk away.  After a little internet searching we found the proper name for this guy and that he's completely harmless.

You would never catch ME holding it though!

Easter Egger

Easter Egger had her wings plucked by another bird.  I'm not sure who the bully was, but it got so bad that I pulled her into the crate in the mud room a week or two ago and took these pictures.  We sprayed Blue-Kot on her, which is a medicine for wounds on animals. 

You can see broken feathers and some missing

Now, a few weeks later, the blue is almost all gone and we saw new feather growth.  Yesterday, after I took these pictures, I let her out of the crate to join the flock.

She went straight to the first spot she could find and started digging for bugs.

So far she's done well with the flock so I think she'll be fine.

Nokesville Road Roosters' Makeover

It was time for the Roosters to have a make over.  We are hoping to paint them once a month to change with the seasons and holidays, but first we have to reward the people who helped to replace them by letting them do the dirty work to paint a rooster.  :)

This time it was a woman who commutes over an hour to work each day and drives past the roosters.  She was very supportive of them being replaced and is just a friendly person that we now know.  She came by for her turn to paint and was going with an 80's rock band theme with bright colors and big hair.

The oldest and I decided to celebrate football season starting.

We couldn't figure out how to give it big hair, but then we saw some garland that was still on the mailbox post from last winter (whoops) and added that and an earring to the bird.

 

Those nutty roosters are at it again.

We've already planned out Octobers' themes and have a few people coming to help paint them.