John building the Last wall.

Last week Friday John took leave for a week so that he could do same building. 

 

So he managed too get a good Shabbat. Sunday it was full steam ahead. Off John and Ishmael went to go and cut a few trees down and bring them home. They managed to get home around lunch time as everything was very wet from the lots and lots of rain that we have been having. Lunch was made and eaten and then off to cut the wood that they had brought home that morning.  John cuts all the wood and Ishmael chops it all up and then packs it in the right places.

Well that is being done John starts the fire for our hot water. We have a donkey on the side of the house that we build a fire under every night and with in half an hour to a hour depending on the temperature we have boiling water for our shower and to do the dishes with. So we need a good supply of wood all the time, it has also been very wet and cold so the inside fire has been on every evening as well.

 

Tristan, Sharna`s boyfriend.

Sharna                                                         Ishmael chopping all the wood after

                                                                   John had cut it.

We had a very sleepless week with the gale force winds that have been keeping us up at night. The other evening at 2am we all levitated out of our beds with a building block that fell off the wall that John is building and landed on the roof that we are sleeping in at the moment. So needless to say that was about the sum of sleep that we got that night, we also had the front door slam 10minutes after that so I had to get up in the cold and windy,rainy weather and sort it all out.

John had managed to do quite a lot of building, he has completely closed off the one side of the house, it is just the one wall that need to be finished and that should not take longer than 2 full days of building. So now the back and sides of the house are finished and it is just the front wall that needs to be done. I am very please and cant wait. The next lot of cash that comes our way will go into putting the glass in so the windows are closed off and the wind then will no longer be able to come and tickle my toes and keep them cold.

But in the mean time John got us 2 new chickens. This time we are doing it properly and got proper egg layers. We will also be getting meat chickens for the deep freeze.

John will be putting fencing up around our large polls outside for the chickens as we want to keep them close to home because of theft.

 

We also had to get Ishmael in the garden again as with the rain comes all the weeds, So Dad and Ishmael have been preparing  the ground for the next planting season.

  

We were given a beehive, so off John went on Sunday to collected the hive before going back to work on Monday. We DONT have the hive yet as because of all the rain the roads are all VERY wet. It was a lot of fun for them as the first car tried to go up the hill and just kept skidding back and then ran out of petrol in the middle of trying to get up the hill. So they walked to the top of the hill and got the land rover and tried to pull the car up, Yes, now both the car and the Landy are sitting at the bottom of the hill and the beehive is halfway up and still waiting for John to collected it. Next week is another week, now we wait and see what it will bring.

Aimee and Sharna bringing Mousse home after a day of grazing out in the field. Aimee thinks that she should be a tree, to bribe Mousse to follow them home.

 

 

 

So here`s to a good week to all and we will be back soon with more on the home front.

Our House

Around December 2004, we moved on to a piece of land in Twee Riviere (it is a Afrikaans word, it means Two Rivers in English and as we are English I will say Two Rivers)

Our Move. Thanks to Bren, Greg’s brother for letting us use his bakkie so that we were able to move our stuff.

So we packed up and moved the +- 600km away from where we stayed in cape town to this little Dorp in the middle of know where.  My Aunt gave us a caravan to stay in as we could not find a place to stay and no finance to do to much,  So we moved in to the van with our two girls.

This was our home for around a year. I was pregnant with David at the time of moving to the land and van,

John managed to get a job 15 minutes away from home. So with the little bit of money that he was making we managed to eat a bit and build slowly.

The START of our house 6 October 2004, Thanks to Greg (My bother in-law) He started to clear the land for us well he was trying to build his house. He made the shape of the house on the sand for me to see, so that I could decide where to put the rooms, The house has enlarge since then, it has now doubled.

We had just had very heavy rains, so the ground was wet and the tractor sunk in to the sand. Greg did manage to get it out. They where off loading gravel for our foundation.

  

As you can see, by the time that we got the foundation done the weeds had grown quite high.  But we where doing it and it felt good.

The start of the house. This is the room that all 8 of us sleep in now. These photos where taken on 25 September 2005

John would build over weekend when we had money to get cement, we used rocks that we found around the place, John took the trailer and car and went out and collected the rock.

  18 August 2006

1 November 2006

Well we where building and trying to get set up we did also have a bit of fun on the side.

John playing with the kids, Grandpa with Sharna,  Hannah and Sharna playing in the sprinkler on a very hot summer day.

 

Sharna and Aimee with two Flowers.

 

The Cousins, Sharna, Hannah, Aimee, Sheth and Caleb

 

 

Our neighbour came to visit with the ox and cart.  We where given a cow so that we could have milk and butter, so yes John used to milk and we were blessed with milk. We also slaughtered a goat that my sister had,

John, John having help with the poll, My Sexy  Husband, Clayton with the girls playing in the tent.   John taking David for a ride on Aimee’s horse, Jacket

 

August 2008. Putting up the polls for the roof. the uprights are 5m and the top poll right at the top that runs across is 12m long.

That is John at the top, he was tying down the polls once they had put them up.

 

 

 

 

David and Aimee on the roof , John nailing down.  John, David and Aimee building the wall.

Sarah and David helping their Dad make cement, Sarah is enjoying it and David thinks it is gross.

 

 

 

Unfortunately our computer crashed and we lost most of our photos for 2010,

Ok so this is where we are right now. This is the last wall that we need to do, and then the shell of the house is finished.

The reason for the covering over the wall, is that the roof is off the room that we sleep in so we have to stop the wind and rain from making us cold. John is off work for a week in two weeks time so that he can finish the building. Will post pictures when done.