This week we took a trip to Ikea and besides filling up the car with a movable kitchen counter we also filled our tummies with the vegan hotdogs they sell. The counter will be useful so we can cut and prepare food more easily.
The weekend started well, the heat is getting a lot less. Which makes it easier to work through the afternoon. Tho got busy with finishing the electrical work and I put the counter together. Not that hard of a job with the Ikea manuals, but I mixed up two boards and could almost start over halfway through. But now I am extra happy it’s done 🙂
The neighbour who takes care of our orchard came to say hi. He also took a look at the issues we have with our water supply. He blew really hard into the pipe which made a lot of water come out and hit him in his face. So to fix it we need to find a way to increase the pressure just for that tube. We’ll be closing all the other tubes in the hope that will do it. But that’s for next week, this week electricity has priority.
The rest of the day I was Thomas’ assistant. We started screwing the structure to the concrete, Tho cut the threads for it with the grinder, and after drilling a hole we put those in with a two part concrete glue.
While the glue was drying we carried the solar panels up the hill one by one. Of course we timed this so it was the hottest moment of the day, way too hot. Adding to that we have no stairs leading up so it was all we could do to keep our balance while lifting those up. But we managed to get all four of them up in one piece!
We placed them on the structure and Tho connected all the wiring while I was doing the second check. After everything was connected we were a bit nervous if it would work. But it did! We are super happy and all credits go to Thomas, really amazing that he put this together by himself.
We ate dinner with our neighbours after this. Before digging in ourselves though they have a tiny kitten that needed it’s bottle of milk. The kitten was left behind stuck in a blackberry bush. They put her back in the hopes the mother would come but no luck. She drank the bottle empty though and was struggling to walk around the house with a fat belly. Sadly cats are Luna’s nemesis, otherwise I’d taken it home right away.
The end of the fig season is coming closer, but I still managed to find around 3 kilos to pick. So another supply to make jam at home. If we want to sell it somewhere someday in the future we will need to get a separate kitchen that follows all hygienic and food safety regulations. I would love to do this, creating a nice label and logo for the jars. Combining that with cakes, cookies and pies would be amazing!
I tried out the grass mower we bought recently, it works on batteries which is great since you have no gas smells or wire to drag around. Now we have a path to go to the figs and grapes without the grass tickling your back. I also removed all the weeds from below the fig trees, I could do this all day!
Meanwhile Tho cleaned the whole house, so it looked a bit less like a pigsty. With all the work we do there are tools and small items everywhere all the time. Since we are pretty disorganized in general we don’t really mind it though.
Almost forgot, but this weekend Luna was listening great! We could leave the fence open, which was really convenient since we had to drag stuff in and out of the garden. Whilst we were working on the solar panels she came checking up and went back inside. We got used to it but at some point we couldn’t find her anymore, and even though she always comes back I started looking. I quickly found her running around our neighbours house chasing the cats. They have a bunch of cat food out, but they scatter once they see Luna. After about 15 minutes of running, trying to be outwitted faster and faster by the cats Luna gave up and came back with me. It’s always a bit stressful, but we don’t need to walk her after a long day of manual labour.
