a busier week than expected
With midsummer past, and C back down to Gothenburg for a bit I had expected that we would make a bit more progress on the earth cellar in the evenings after he got home from work this week. However, it turns out that one of his brothers has his vacation now, and took the opportunity to drive up from the south a really big lorry with an open back that almost looks like an oversized dump truck, but it doesn't dump. Instead its sides fold down so that one can put stuff onto and off of the bed with a fork lift. Since he was doing the drive anyway, he took the opportunity to bring us some tree parts--he had cut down an oak, a cherry, and an apple tree on his property, and since he knows we want to build musical instruments he offered the wood too us. We gladly said yes, but our circular saw can't cut things more than 4" tall (I have no idea why these boys, who live in a metric country and normally use centimeters, chose to refer to wood thickness in inches, but they did), so his brother pre-cut the oak trunk into 4" slabs, and loaded up the chunks + the smaller unsliced trunks and branches and brought them north.
The boys have been discussing for quite some time (possibly years since first mention) cleaning up their dad's property at Hemmingsmark. They grew up in that village, and when the kids were grown and their parents decided to move to a house they built themselves overlooking the water near Piteå they sold the part of the farm the house was on, but kept the largely forested (+ a couple of small fields) property across the street. Their property on the water wasn't that big, and didn't have a lot of out-buildings, so the Hemmingsmark land was where they stored stuff (three old shipping containers full of things the kids left behind when they moved out, and stuff the parents weren't using anymore, plus things like the tractor and digger which also were stored there, and where they took the wood they cut from their other forest properties to chop and spit it into firewood to keep the house warm in the winter. However, in addition to storing stuff that might once again be useful, there had also accumulated a few piles of things that won't be useful (including a very old shed that had collapsed from age).
Now that their parents have moved to a beautiful old farm, with plenty of property and outbuildings they have decided to quit storing stuff at Hemmingsmark, and to move the heavy equipment to the new farm, too. Therefore it is finally time to do the cleaning up and organizing of the Hemmingsmark property.
Therefore, after lord_kjar got off of work on Monday we drove down there (75 minute drive) to help the two brothers who had been hard at work there all day. We arrived on time to be given the task of taking off the extra roof that had been over the gap between two of the containers, which provided a dry place to store the cut and split firewood to keep it dry before moving it to the houses where it would be burned.
So up the roof he and I went. He has done lots of on-roof related tasks over the years--they built their parent's last house, and have done more than one re-roofing project together. Therefore, after we took off the corrugated metal over roof exposing the widely spaced wooden boards nailed crosswise over the old telephone poles, which stretch from one container to the other, he continued to move rapidly and with confidence, using his crowbar to pull nails out of the boards from a standing, and bent over position. I, on the other hand, have only ever been on roofs to enjoy the view (but that fairly often--mom couldn't keep us kids off of the roof, even after my sister managed to hurt herself pretty badly by slipping when she was climbing down the tree). Therefore instead of standing up to use the crowbar, I sat down on the boards for better stability, and then pried up the nails. This, of course, meant that he managed to pull far more nails than I did (we won't discuss the fact that his longer muscles + testosterone means that he would have still pulled them faster, even if he had been sitting down and couldn't move as fast from one to the next), yet he still appreciated my help--together the job was done faster than he could have managed it.
That first evening we had time only for that, loading the above mentioned nice wood onto the trailer, and discussing the plans for the next night. Then it was home, arriving around midnight, which meant that by the time yoga was done and we were ready for bed it was 01:00.
Tuesday we both went to work, and then again went to Hemmingsmark, where he and I removed the old straw from an old shed, took the rest of the way apart the above mentioned collapsed shed and sorted the components into keep (corrugated metal roof pieces), add to the growing bonfire pile (the old wood), and trash (the tarp that had been nailed over it some many years back), loaded the boards from the roof we had disassembled yesterday onto our trailer to take home to use in the extra shed that we are planning on putting up here (we bought the logs for it the autumn before last, but haven't had a chance to set it up yet--that one will likely be where the forge lives when we get to it), and gathered up more stuff to add to the bonfire pile. In the meanwhile his brothers used the digger to pick up pieces of the old broken huge piece of heavy equipment (too broken to even guess what it had been, but it is larger than the digger, which is huge) onto the back of that above mentioned truck to haul away to where one disposes of large scrap metal. This took long enough that it was 12:30 before we got home.
Wednesday we had planned on heading there again, but at the last minute they sent him to Jokkmokk for work, so he didn't get home from work till almost 22:00, after which he had to spend some time at the computer doing paperwork to close out cases he had been working on this week so that accounting could do their month-end tasks.
Thursday afternoon was "clean the water pipes" day. The houses in this end of our neighborhood share a common well, and the water system has had a problem since before we moved in of too much Mn in the water, which, if you don't have a good water filter in your house, means that the inside of your toilet turns black fairly quickly with the Mn precipitating out and depositing. I noticed the black straight away when I moved in, but was surprised to learn it is Mn, since that is a fairly minor component in the metamorphic rocks I have studied, and the only mineral in those rocks which wants to incorporate it at all is garnet. But then I learned that this is a fairly common problem with Sweden--the Mn collects in the glacial tills (of which there is plenty in our area). I also remembered that Mn nodules are fairly common in some sandstones--when the sand is being deposited the Mn collects in pockets, and then when it all turns to stone those pockets turn into dense hard black lumps in the stone, that are usually more resistant to weathering.
Our water organization has recently improved the filters that the water goes through right after being pumped, but there was still lots of Mn reaching the houses, meaning we need to change our filters fairly often. So someone suggested that we clean the pipes between the water pump and the houses, and we had a meeting to discuss it. After much discussion, the decision was made to do a test of cleaning the pipes between the pump and the closest house, which is ours, and Thursday was the day.
It was a fascinating process. They turned off the water, opened up the pipe in our basement (after I removed everything from that room!), and threaded a small diameter hose down the pipe--pushing water through it all the while. There was so much black ick in those pipes that all of the water which bubbled out of the open pipe on the first pass through was black. The second time they repeated this it alternated between running kind of clearish, when he paused the hose for a short moment, and then running black again when it moved to a new spot. The third time it alternated between mostly clear and kind of browish, as most of the ick was gone by then. After that they turned on the water again, and it just poured out into our basement (and, of course, straight down the drain that is in that room), first running black as it cleared out more loosened ick, then brown, and eventually clear again. In the meantime our floor was coated with black deposits from the Mn, that was slowly being picked up and carried away by the fresh water. Watching how much energy was required for the water to move those fine particles, I better understand how those Mn nodules form in pockets of sand.
I was very pleased that once they were done and he put the pipes back together that he actually rinsed clean the floor and walls and then dried the floor. That evening, instead of going to Hemmingsmark, we drove a bit further, to his parent's new farm, to return his mother's printer, which he had repaired for her. This gave us a chance to hang out and chat with his brothers, who also took the evening off from working on the great clean up project.
Today being Friday, and my normal day off, I returned all of the stuff to that room, slightly better organized than before, finished building a set of pattens, and did lots of laundry. It isn't yet decided if we are going to Hemmingsmark again nor not tonight. I kind of hope we stay home. I still have a few things I want to do to get ready for the SCA event that I will be heading to next week. On the other hand, all of that time driving back and forth means that we have been making great progress reading aloud from Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones. He is really loving the story (we are past most of the major plot revelations now--just a few last complications to deal with), and I am enjoying it even more on the second read than the first, and I really liked the first (I have always been an addicted re-reader, and this story lends itself very well to multiple reads). Once we finish it we can buy the next in the series, and this time I can read it out loud on my first read, which has the advantage in that we can pause and speculate together how things will turn out, since neither of us knows.
The boys have been discussing for quite some time (possibly years since first mention) cleaning up their dad's property at Hemmingsmark. They grew up in that village, and when the kids were grown and their parents decided to move to a house they built themselves overlooking the water near Piteå they sold the part of the farm the house was on, but kept the largely forested (+ a couple of small fields) property across the street. Their property on the water wasn't that big, and didn't have a lot of out-buildings, so the Hemmingsmark land was where they stored stuff (three old shipping containers full of things the kids left behind when they moved out, and stuff the parents weren't using anymore, plus things like the tractor and digger which also were stored there, and where they took the wood they cut from their other forest properties to chop and spit it into firewood to keep the house warm in the winter. However, in addition to storing stuff that might once again be useful, there had also accumulated a few piles of things that won't be useful (including a very old shed that had collapsed from age).
Now that their parents have moved to a beautiful old farm, with plenty of property and outbuildings they have decided to quit storing stuff at Hemmingsmark, and to move the heavy equipment to the new farm, too. Therefore it is finally time to do the cleaning up and organizing of the Hemmingsmark property.
Therefore, after lord_kjar got off of work on Monday we drove down there (75 minute drive) to help the two brothers who had been hard at work there all day. We arrived on time to be given the task of taking off the extra roof that had been over the gap between two of the containers, which provided a dry place to store the cut and split firewood to keep it dry before moving it to the houses where it would be burned.
So up the roof he and I went. He has done lots of on-roof related tasks over the years--they built their parent's last house, and have done more than one re-roofing project together. Therefore, after we took off the corrugated metal over roof exposing the widely spaced wooden boards nailed crosswise over the old telephone poles, which stretch from one container to the other, he continued to move rapidly and with confidence, using his crowbar to pull nails out of the boards from a standing, and bent over position. I, on the other hand, have only ever been on roofs to enjoy the view (but that fairly often--mom couldn't keep us kids off of the roof, even after my sister managed to hurt herself pretty badly by slipping when she was climbing down the tree). Therefore instead of standing up to use the crowbar, I sat down on the boards for better stability, and then pried up the nails. This, of course, meant that he managed to pull far more nails than I did (we won't discuss the fact that his longer muscles + testosterone means that he would have still pulled them faster, even if he had been sitting down and couldn't move as fast from one to the next), yet he still appreciated my help--together the job was done faster than he could have managed it.
That first evening we had time only for that, loading the above mentioned nice wood onto the trailer, and discussing the plans for the next night. Then it was home, arriving around midnight, which meant that by the time yoga was done and we were ready for bed it was 01:00.
Tuesday we both went to work, and then again went to Hemmingsmark, where he and I removed the old straw from an old shed, took the rest of the way apart the above mentioned collapsed shed and sorted the components into keep (corrugated metal roof pieces), add to the growing bonfire pile (the old wood), and trash (the tarp that had been nailed over it some many years back), loaded the boards from the roof we had disassembled yesterday onto our trailer to take home to use in the extra shed that we are planning on putting up here (we bought the logs for it the autumn before last, but haven't had a chance to set it up yet--that one will likely be where the forge lives when we get to it), and gathered up more stuff to add to the bonfire pile. In the meanwhile his brothers used the digger to pick up pieces of the old broken huge piece of heavy equipment (too broken to even guess what it had been, but it is larger than the digger, which is huge) onto the back of that above mentioned truck to haul away to where one disposes of large scrap metal. This took long enough that it was 12:30 before we got home.
Wednesday we had planned on heading there again, but at the last minute they sent him to Jokkmokk for work, so he didn't get home from work till almost 22:00, after which he had to spend some time at the computer doing paperwork to close out cases he had been working on this week so that accounting could do their month-end tasks.
Thursday afternoon was "clean the water pipes" day. The houses in this end of our neighborhood share a common well, and the water system has had a problem since before we moved in of too much Mn in the water, which, if you don't have a good water filter in your house, means that the inside of your toilet turns black fairly quickly with the Mn precipitating out and depositing. I noticed the black straight away when I moved in, but was surprised to learn it is Mn, since that is a fairly minor component in the metamorphic rocks I have studied, and the only mineral in those rocks which wants to incorporate it at all is garnet. But then I learned that this is a fairly common problem with Sweden--the Mn collects in the glacial tills (of which there is plenty in our area). I also remembered that Mn nodules are fairly common in some sandstones--when the sand is being deposited the Mn collects in pockets, and then when it all turns to stone those pockets turn into dense hard black lumps in the stone, that are usually more resistant to weathering.
Our water organization has recently improved the filters that the water goes through right after being pumped, but there was still lots of Mn reaching the houses, meaning we need to change our filters fairly often. So someone suggested that we clean the pipes between the water pump and the houses, and we had a meeting to discuss it. After much discussion, the decision was made to do a test of cleaning the pipes between the pump and the closest house, which is ours, and Thursday was the day.
It was a fascinating process. They turned off the water, opened up the pipe in our basement (after I removed everything from that room!), and threaded a small diameter hose down the pipe--pushing water through it all the while. There was so much black ick in those pipes that all of the water which bubbled out of the open pipe on the first pass through was black. The second time they repeated this it alternated between running kind of clearish, when he paused the hose for a short moment, and then running black again when it moved to a new spot. The third time it alternated between mostly clear and kind of browish, as most of the ick was gone by then. After that they turned on the water again, and it just poured out into our basement (and, of course, straight down the drain that is in that room), first running black as it cleared out more loosened ick, then brown, and eventually clear again. In the meantime our floor was coated with black deposits from the Mn, that was slowly being picked up and carried away by the fresh water. Watching how much energy was required for the water to move those fine particles, I better understand how those Mn nodules form in pockets of sand.
I was very pleased that once they were done and he put the pipes back together that he actually rinsed clean the floor and walls and then dried the floor. That evening, instead of going to Hemmingsmark, we drove a bit further, to his parent's new farm, to return his mother's printer, which he had repaired for her. This gave us a chance to hang out and chat with his brothers, who also took the evening off from working on the great clean up project.
Today being Friday, and my normal day off, I returned all of the stuff to that room, slightly better organized than before, finished building a set of pattens, and did lots of laundry. It isn't yet decided if we are going to Hemmingsmark again nor not tonight. I kind of hope we stay home. I still have a few things I want to do to get ready for the SCA event that I will be heading to next week. On the other hand, all of that time driving back and forth means that we have been making great progress reading aloud from Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones. He is really loving the story (we are past most of the major plot revelations now--just a few last complications to deal with), and I am enjoying it even more on the second read than the first, and I really liked the first (I have always been an addicted re-reader, and this story lends itself very well to multiple reads). Once we finish it we can buy the next in the series, and this time I can read it out loud on my first read, which has the advantage in that we can pause and speculate together how things will turn out, since neither of us knows.