What a great job! I love your little wash house! I bet your friends and family think you have lost the cheese off your cracker!I get so excited when reading your plans...I had always wanted to build a straw bale cob structure. They are so much better than traditional housing and so much more open to artistic design in the cob...the sky's the limit on features and interesting little things you can add for comfort, utility and beauty.
I agree...that kind of work doesn't feel like work because it's half dreams and half fulfillment of dreams, so the dream half spurs you on and makes it seem more like fun and creativity than hard work. And it's the kind of hard work that leaves you satisfied at the end of the day...not a bit like most jobs. That's homesteading and I can't think of any better kind of life for people, for their kids and for the animals involved.
Here's a pic of our summer shower when we were homesteading..and this wasn't until several years after we started and was seen as a total luxury to use at the end of a sweaty work day! You can see the bench with the "sink" and the well that had running water if you cared to pump for it. The holding tank at the top of the shower had to be filled bucket by bucket climbed up a ladder..but, Oh, so worth it!!!
And our first cellar, made of logs...and that is me at 10 yrs of age..with my Dad in the background working on the structure.
On keeping chickens quiet...not sure about that..but how much noise could just two chickens make? Are your neighbors really THAT noise sensitive? No barking dogs in the neighborhood or anything?
Wonderful!!! What a luxury shower! We bought a 2.5 gallon hand pumped weed sprayer and will use that on occasion for a shower - but the bowl works just as well, particularly for hair.
I would love to have a hand-pumped well. Do't know of anyone who has them anymore, but I grew up with one in the summers. We will need to find one before we dig our well (if we do!)
Where was your home stead when you were 10yo?
Cheese off my cracker?!? Ah, if it comes from me, they aren't too surprised! Some of the people I am friends with are right up my alley, but those at work... not so much. But then, they just shake their heads because they also know that I've had 4 home births, drink fermented kefir drinks, take permaculture courses, grow my own vegetables in the city, etc... and they wouldn't dream of that!
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