The bad news... kind of...

Well you saw the lovely picture of the garbage on the previous post? Well... there is more

<== this is the well house

The picture below is in the foundation we thought we owned. and the dishwasher is next to our power pole.

The rest of it is just randomly over the cleared area of the property. Now while this is is bad news... The is some more bad news but also good in a way. Aside from that dishwasher? The garbage is not on our property... it seems contrary to what we were told we do not own any of the cleared except... a few feet to the west of the power pole, thankfully the well is within our property.

So now we are clearing land somewhat away from the cleared driveway and will build there once we have a big enough space cleared there. We visited the house that is in the Missouri Journal and met Jon, who with Mark own that piece of property. Jon has decided to finally move down here for good, and Mark might too. We will get to meet him after the 1st of May.

Picture time!

<== this is some lovely garbage at the front

<== this one is our "hang out" and dinning spot.


<== one view of our tent, it is a 7-8 person tent and the center room is 7 ft tall we have our double bed in the center with my son's twin in the side room and my two girl's in sleeping bags on the other side.


<=== front view of the tent

Then next one down is the car and moving truck when we arrived.

We have arrived!

Well, we spent 3 long days last week driving to MO in a moving truck and our station wagon and it seemed like it took forever. I plan to put up some pictures as soon as I remember where I put the camera. There is a previous foundation that was not built on it seems to have been for a straw bale house, and if it isn't a lot more than building with wood then we will use straw bale as then we won't need regular insulation with it. I spent yesterday "breaking sod" with a pick ax... that wasn't fun, but I now have the grape vines I brought with in the ground I hope it was soon enough. We were warned that if you try to use a rototiller on the land her without having a big tractor come in first you'll bust the blades on it. there are so many rocks in the ground it eats them up. As for those rocks the man down the street from us told us his garden grows rocks.. any time it rains there is a fresh new crop of them. With the grapes I also planted my peas so we would have some this year as it is getting late down here to plant them. I have planted a couple of cucumbers in the hopes they might come up early. If they do yeah! we have them early and when I do the regular planting we will have plenty.

The kids are enjoying living here though they aren't happy with the work involved with it. They spend five minutes doing something we ask them to do and they then complain they are tired, of course when we let them go play they have tons of energy. The local town is one of those if you blink you missed it towns, and the county seat is only slightly bigger.

When we arrived in MO the car's alternator died and thankfully one of the neighbor's had an engine block he was getting rid of that he let us take the alternator off of and for now it is working, though we are not going to push it any.

My partner Silver has started clearing for our house to be built and next month we will start with adding to the foundation that is already there. Once we check wood prices we will know if we are building frame or straw bale. I am kinda hoping for straw bale as it will be a semi faster build.

Thats all for now wish us luck!

Stressful times

We have a miracle baby, a kitten we have named him Crookshanks after Herminoie's cat in Harry Potter. About 2 weeks ago he was a typical 2 1/2 month old kitten, then one day when I got back home from work Silver told me he thought he was hurt as he was crying a great deal for a few hours. However by the time I had returned home he was acting listless and getting stiff and panting hard.

We just laid him down for the night and the next morning he was worse, he was barely mewling and his eyes were shut, stiff as a board and panting hard. We didn't know what to do, but he was still breathing so I suggested we put him in our electric blanket and see what happens. So we wrapped him up in it and his sister for some reason curled up next to him9as if to help), and we left them alone in our bedroom separated from our other cats.

About 6 hours later I went in to check thinking he'd probably had died, and he had his eyes open and though was still panting seemed very aware of his surroundings. He was drenched as if he had a fever and it had broke, and he was still stiff. Silver decided then that he might have a chance and started giving him water in an eye dropper and working his legs so they'd unstiffen. At this time he still could not lift hi head up but he drank up the water.

That night we put him in a covered box to sleep as his sister apparently thought he was well enough to play with... though we didn't. The next morning he was more aware of everything and trying to meow at us and trying to move around on just his front legs, pushing himself around. He still wasn't lifting his head though. That day Silver started giving him canned milk to drink, still working the kitten's muscles so they could move and by the end of the day Crookshaks was trying his rear legs too!

the next day he had his front legs working great, but still working out both together, and Silver decided to feed the little guy some pork fat off of a roast we had precook and he gobbled it up. it was kinda funny to watch as he still couldn't do much with his head however it wasn't flopping around anymore. So I had to hold his head in one hand and feed him small peices with the other avoiding the teeth.

Now, two weeks later the little guy is just starting to run around with even our big cats and even playing with our big neutered male. Though Crookshanks' head seems to possibly be permanently crooked now, tilted to one side. I am not sure if he just hasn't figured out how to straighten it or if it's something else. Does anyone know what might have affected him? Silver at first thought he was having a stroke... but he was also acting like he had a severe fever.

As to our other problems, our car had to go off the road for over a week and it has cost us some of our moving money so we won't be buying the mini bus, however... we might be renting a truck as Silver is receiving some money that might cover that, I just hope the rest of our money covers the gas all the way there or we will have some issues. the other option is to rent a storage unit and have him come back later and rent a truck then. However overall that would cost more in the long run.

With the money situation it seems we will have tons of time to plan out where our house will go and the garden space for the first year. We have decided to just build our permanent house but in sections, starting with the kids spot first, I hope it comes out well.