15 Sep 11

Long hot summer

It's been a gorgeous, very hot and very long summer ending in a deluge of rain on the 2nd Sep - before we had a chance to finish our roof water catch and on the day Dave's brother and family turned up for a brief visit!

We gave ourselves a few weeks off earthshipping, it being so hot an' all. Although we did pay it a couple of visits - one with some friends who helped us put the 3rd coat of paint on the roof - and got sunstroke doing it. The next visitors were Dave's brother and family who helped us pick almonds, and luckily didn't get sunstroke (note the rain clouds in the distance).

Below: Anja, Dave and Symon picking almonds

Back to a busy Autumn

Now we're back to a very busy Autumn, with loads to do and lots of prospective visitors, oh and the odd talk or two. Will we get it finished to move in this winter? Oh I do hope so!

Hi Ho, it's off to work we go...

We had 7 Sunseeders come and help us today and lots of different jobs to do. There was the water tank to re-level after the rain sunk one side of it and the channel for the outlet pipe to dig (above). The round room floor to level, the planter to finish digging and lastly, but not least, the almonds to pick.

Below top: Round room floor being leveled.

Below bottom: This rock was so hard to get out I almost starting planning ways to make it a feature in the final floor!

Martinez made good progress digging the planter using a seriously huge pickaxe on the end of that metal pole.

While Anna and Hanna picked all the remaining almond trees. We didn't get a brilliant harvest this year - only one sack from all 30 or more trees. I'm hoping to get time soon to do some serious pruning and tlc to help improve next years harvest.

This is the lid for the 2,000ltr water tank which is all nice and level again, the outlet connector is fitted and we started adapting the lid to turn it into a first stage filter when time ran out. Here is how we left it... now if it rains the water will run into the tank rather than under it.

Thank you everyone, you worked your socks off and got loads done today, we really appreciate it.