Chapter 120...Body Work & Painting The Shipping Container...And A Lot More

Off Grid... Chapter 120 Back to the end of August: We picked up 12 more five gallon buckets of sealer for the driveway. We want to finish the sealing for the paving that was done the first year. We are waiting for a good day....one that is not too hot. Each day Mike, Niki and I go to the pond to feed the fish. What is really cool is we have trained a turtle, the one we found on the side of the road, to come up and feed. He is so cool. I tried to take a picture but he didn't come out. Sorry!!! 8/29 Mike has been working really hard on our main building to get it ready for painting. He has repaired some dents, taken care of the rust, and cleaned it up. Kind of like a really big car Mike sanding the building. More sanding. And finally blowing off the building of any debris leftover from the sanding. While he worked on the building I made 12 jars of salsa. I am trying to do anything and everything with all the tomatoes my garden has. 8/30 Today is the day. Time to paint the building. Mike is going to spray it while I hold cardboard up to protect the solar panels. Hopefully we don;t have any wind today Mike getting the sprayer ready. Mike starting to spray. We decided to paint the building the same color as the house. Next Spring we plan to landscape around the building. Almost done with one side. The building is done....and much better than it was and 9/1 We have been watching our driveway and new curbs to see if we will have any washout. We got a little rain about a week ago and we have a slight washout at the end of our drive. Time to fix it Mike and I went to the Farm Supply and picked up a concrete drain box and some pipe. Now for the work. On our way down the driveway we check out the new curbing. Here is a spout from our drive that goes into the ditch where we ran the culvert under the driveway. This one works well  The curbs on the driveway. They came out pretty good. To get the drain box in we have to cut a rectangle out of the pavement. Mike gives me an ax and I go to work, lol. It's a good thing the pavement wasn't too thick at that point We finally get the new drain box in place. Now it's time to dig the ditch for the pipe. Ugh!! This is where it got tough. It was not easy digging. Thankfully it wasn't far. The pipe is in and connected to the drain box. Next we put some seed and hay on the freshly dug area. Another job done...the new drain box is finished. If we could just keep the cows off of it so they don't crush the pipe. We will have to add some rocks to keep them away. 9/3 We have some rain in the forecast so Mike wants to get seed on the hill across the way. It is a very very steep hill This is the plan. We are going to take 2 buckets, one for each of us, and 100 pounds of grass seed and drive through a neighbor's property and throw the seed "down" from the top We get to the top border of our property and I carry the buckets while Mike carries one bag of seed. This is the hill we are trying to seed. Mike goes one way and I go the other way with our buckets of seed. Looking across at Mike. It is very steep and very hard to walk on. I finally made it as far as I could with my bucket of seed and I froze. All I could think of was tumbling down the mountain. I had no idea how I was going to get back to meet Mike in the middle. I'm thinking "oh great Mike is going to have to call 911 to get me off this hill" I got down on all fours and started to crawl backwards with my bucket. I was finally able to get back to the middle. I told Mike "I am done with this hill". He took the last bit of seed we had left and threw it down the hill. We did the best we could. It is not an easy hill. Next spring we will have to work some more on it. After we got back to the Jeep, we drove down and put more seed on the flat area. Whew!!! The bank is already growing in. We know that the rain is coming and we will have to postpone sealing the driveway. When we get back home I help Mike unload the trailer with the sealer buckets. I am so looking forward to that job....not, lol. Instead of hurting ourselves, we have gotten wiser Mike uses the hand truck to take the buckets back to the building. That is all we can do for awhile. Mike and I went to NY so the sealing of the driveway will have to wait until we get back home. Lisa