Things are moving along here on the homestead including the chicken coop, ever growing garden and I’ve even been forced to spend some time inside sewing up curtains because some of the loners we have were needed elsewhere.
I enjoy sewing and doing things inside but right now I’d rather be outside enjoying my garden. I’ve been waiting almost 10 years to have my garden here and I want to spend as much time enjoying each aspect of it as I can. I even enjoy weeding it believe it or not. Watching the plants grow from seed, mature and eventually end up on our table. It really does bring me joy. A few days ago things were not going so smoothly inside the house (just one little thing after another like my nice digital thermometer breaking, etc.) and to take a break and refresh I went out in the garden to pull weeds. Yup, I’m a nerd. I’ll do an exclusive garden update soon.
I’ve also been waiting years to have my chicken coop and flock here in Congo. I have a small flock of 6 birds right now as our coop is being built. The foundation was dug and made, the floor poured and now the outside walls of brick have started to go up. It’s going to take time but on Dave’s days off he is outside laying more bricks. Some evenings even after working most of the day he will go out and lay a row or two.
Two weekends ago we had a huge thunderstorm here that flooded parts of our house, had rivers running through our yard and almost washed out parts of our garden. Dave was able to reroute all of the water draining from the hillside into our garden to go through the berry patch instead (which isn’t planted yet) and saved our corn. It did do some damage but overall the garden has survived. In the future we will have to do something about the runoff and reroute it better so it doesn’t come into our yard.
Thunderstorms also slow outdoor projects like laying bricks, which unfortunately when you get thunderstorms on the weekend they really eat up the large chunks of time that would have been spent making progress on it. Things take time but Dave is working as fast and as hard as he can on it to get it done. Hopefully by the end of October we will be able to order our flock from Uganda. We will see how that works out as we have a family conference right in the middle for a few days.
So projects are moving along at the pace that we are able to accomplish along with living everyday life and working. Yesterday we had the very first salad of thinnings from the garden. I look forward to enjoying more and more produce from our garden. I’ll create a more in-depth look at the coop building project and the garden soon.
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