Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Never thought I'd care so much about septic...

Today our septic system got its second tank installed, and the next step is to have the leach lines fixed/installed. Our move in date is highly dependent on this getting accomplished! The area where our mobile home will be is so very close to the septic system, that it just makes sense to not have the home moved until it is done. So, the waiting continues. We are still fixing up the mobile home in the meantime, but we are having to do a lot of commuting in order to do so. With no septic, it isn't reasonable to stay out at our property. Once our mobile home is moved and we get running water to the home, along with septic and electricity, we can stay out there, even if the home still needs lots of repairs.

A while back I read a couple little mini-books by Renee Ellison at homeschoolhowtos.com. One was called 10 Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary People Who Got Free of House Debt, and the other was called Money in Your Pocket. These books were, I believe, under $5 each, and immediately downloadable as an e-book, and they were GREAT books! In the money in your pocket book, she writes a letter to her nephew, giving him advice about what they would do if they were young and just starting out. She talks about acquiring a piece of earth, debt free, at the earliest possible moment, and making that his highest priority, even before college. She was saying live in a camper if you have to, then upgrade to a bigger camper, or a mobile home; if the Israelites lived in tents, we could, too! She was, of course, saying that would be easier to do when you are younger and don't have a family, but it was this kind of thinking that got us spurred on in our journey. We thought about all the possibilities of dwellings we could live in, and about all the things we could really live without. Most people enjoy camping for a short period of time; some love living in their campers or RVs even for a good portion of the year. Something about the simplicity draws people. So we looked at every improvement over that as a blessing! We are learning to appreciate the simple things in life. Since we had decided we could live without 2 bathrooms (only HAVE to have 1), finding a mobile home in our price range with 2 bathrooms was a blessing! We decided that even a house with a yard slightly bigger than ours (that we could own debt free) would be wonderful; imagine our joy to find that we were getting 7 acres! God just really changed our perspective on things, and I'm glad He did. It's so much more fun to appreciate things, no matter how small, than it is to be unthankful and discontented with a lot! That's not to say we don't complain sometimes. When we try to go in that trailer and there are about 30 yellow jackets waiting inside to greet us (it's not air tight right now, since it has shifted from the move, and is still waiting to be moved yet again), and I feel like I can't even eat out there without them buzzing all over us, yeah, I get a little irritated! And the no flushing toilets thing is getting old. But we have a goal in mind, and we're getting there. And when it's all over, I will be SO thankful for our septic system!

3 comments:

  1. Are they really yellow jackets or are they paper wasps? Identification is important. Paper wasps build the open-holed "paper" nests on the sides of structures. Yellow jackets tend to build football style closed nests in the ground. Yellow jackets are dangerous and aggressive. Paper wasps are annoying (but can sting of course). Getting rid of paper wasps is a lot simpler but you want to keep a few around as they are somewhat beneficial. Too many, however, will draw yellow jackets as they like to eat them.

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  2. Well, I THINK they are yellow jackets. Their abdomen is black and yellow striped, I've seen them in the ground where it's muddy (you know, like after a rain), and their legs are yellowish, I think. Jeremy said that lately they've been mostly sluggish and just hanging out on the walls, and he was wondering if it was because it's winter (or maybe they are drunk on the paint fumes!). We just spray them down with wasp spray when they are indoors, and we have a "trap" hanging on a tree that draws them in with a sugar-type solution or something, then traps them in. We have hundreds of them inside the trap!

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  3. OK, Gale, you WERE right! I looked it up, and although they look VERY similar, the yellow jacket has a thicker abdomen than the paper wasp. When you were saying paper wasp, I was thinking of those blue/black dirt daubers. All the wasps I'd seen around here were red, so I had no idea there were black and yellow wasps. Anyway, that is GOOD news! It said they have trouble flying in temps below 50 degrees, which explains why they have been so sluggish, and although we'd killed probably a hundred of them in our trailer in the past couple weeks, no one has been stung.

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