We All Work Together: Perfect!

We all had a great day. The children and I finished Dangerous Journey, an illustrated retelling of Pilgrim’s Progress. Phil put more wood chips in the chicken house. Abigail and Abraham then sat on top of the house, holding chickens.


Isaiah spent several hours with the sheep, hand-feeding the minerals that are available to the sheep at all times, and holding ram lamb B.B.




Jadon hacked through a "fairly large" tree with his hatchet.

Phil cut down more trees along the fence line, both with the regular saw and the chainsaw.


After lunch, Phil tried out the new bilge pump, trying to get enough excess water out of the tree holes so the drainage tile won’t float, and cover that bottom foot with subsoil with some minerals mixed in.

The weather was in the 60s, so all the frozen ground that has vexed my planting plans thawed beautifully. The pump worked exactly as we’d hoped, and by the end of the day we had not 10 holes one-third backfilled, but 38! Phil was the main worker, with the children and I offering support as best we could. Jadon pumped out a few holes, and when I complimented him on his strength, he said, “That’s my lumberjack muscles at work.”

All of us working together—the vision and dream we’d had when we moved. But today it came true. Abigail helped move drainage tiles. Jadon pumped water. Isaiah moved rocks. Abraham tromped down the dirt in holes and used his little mallet to knock more dirt in. Joe picked up the hacksaw we used for cutting drainage tiles and wandered around with a very pleased grin.

And when, at the end of the day, Isaiah jumped into a hole that hadn’t been refilled and sank into the miry clay, Abraham said, “I’ll save you!” And offered him the end of the mallet, thinking he could pull his brother to safety. Phil was rinsing the pump, and Isaiah was not in dire need, but Jadon jumped in, too. So Phil rescued them both, dirty mud almost up to Isaiah’s knees, and one boot completely submerged (there was muddy clay inside all the way to the toes.

So all was good until about 11pm, when both Isaiah and Abraham had the projectile vomits within minutes of each other. No warm water, no running water, no place to bathe them, no place to bathe me, no washer to put the very dirty bedclothes. . . . An unanticipated challenge.

Today: the beautiful reality and the less pleasant reality. I'll take it!