Two Disasters...and the Addition Hangs Firm...

I don't know why these things happen when I'm gone? Murphy's Law? Concow Law?

Yesterday I had to make a trip to Sacramento and to Napa. When I was gone we had a diaphragm failure. No, not that one. The FIMCO pump--which pumps the water up to the house--decided that she was tired and broke. Joni said that there was water everywhere in the pumphouse. We have the part on order.


So now we are hauling water yet again. Minor irritation.

I got back after sunset. Retired to the deck (it's warmer now) and watched the Full Moon. Read some. Then the winds picked up. The gusts swayed the trees...winds blowing like a hurricane.

We had just finished the roof that day, and those late night worries appeared. "Did we finish the roof just to have it blow off with this windstorm"? The wind blew and blew. I thought of our first night at the Compound, when we had to be evacuated because of the Concow Fires. "Is the Universe conspiring against us"? Is Mother Nature giving us a test"? I fell asleep.

This morning we found that the tent over our bed had been blown over.

But the roof held firm. I was particularly worried about this overhang in the photo below. We wanted a large overhang for a couple of reasons. First to shade this (what will be the Family Room) in the summer. Secondly, we wanted it to overhang the roof on the existing Cabin. The problem is that the high winds come up the canyon from this direction. I had visions of our roof being picked up (in Dorothy like fashion) and being blown to Kansas.

The roof held firm; passed the first test.


So today I will move the bed up under our gigantic porch. I will sort through the strawbales to see which are usable for the walls (we had a tarp failure in a rainstorm last week) and haul the usable ones (one by one, in a wheelbarrow) up under the new roof. And the outdoor kitchen will be retired today.

We are getting ready to start the walls...