“It’s been so hot and wet it’s not sticky – it’s drenching. I wake up and go outside and am wet with sweat the whole time I’m not in a cold shower or soaking in our big water trough.”

I found this old draft of a blog post I had written recently for last July about how I felt like I was living in a constant pool of sweat. It’s very relatable this year too.

Despite the heat and sweatiness and being set back by an ankle injury, lots got done at the new homestead this past week.

The girls came out with me, and we struggled together, drenched with sweat the whole time…..

It’s very hard work to haul this stuff around, dig post holes through clay and roots, haul tools and buckets of water, and mix and pour concrete, but Rose and I are both fairly athletic, and it’s almost ready for the wire.

As soon as this is complete and electrified, we can begin moving the animals out, and the WE can move out temporarily into an RV. It’s so exciting! Everything has felt so dragging-on and discouraging lately, I feel like I have been toiling with no hope of escape through a great river that pushed me back, and I have just been fighting the current and feeling exhausted from it. Getting this work done felt like overcoming a huge obstacle at last.

The truth is, this part has intimidated me SO much. Honestly, I needed the moral support more than the muscle. The high-tensile fencing is something I don’t trust the convicts with, because it has to be perfectly level, but I am out of my element with concreting posts in and using power tools.

I recently repaired the lids on the movable chicken shelter, and it gave me a little confidence boost. The broken lids were a major problem, because the goats would jump on top of the shelter and the lids would sink in, and the little chickens would escape and get eaten by something (the cats).

The lids have been degrading for years and finally have splintered into complete disrepair, and I’ve struggled with them every day.

I got the kind of lumber and hardware that looked right, borrowed my dad’s impact driver and sawzall, and set out to fix it the other day. I can’t even tell you HOW NERVOUS I felt walking up with the tools and everything. Like a fish out of water. Like Larry, Moe and Curly setting out on a painting job. I think I have about the handiness level of someone’s idiot dad – just enough to be a danger to myself and my family.

But I DID manage to cut the lumber to the right size, and I figured out the bit set and how to take the hardware out of the old pieces of wood and recycle the better screws, and I even improved the design with some cross-bracing so the lids will hold up when a goat jumps on it. The hardest part was trying to keep the little chickens from hopping out of the top of the pen while I was working on repairing the lids one at a time (a few had to be chased).

When I finally held up the finished lids, I couldn’t believe how strong and functional they felt! It was a great feeling to have managed. And my wife didn’t even have to pick the tools and screws up for me afterwards!