Another great weekend out at the homestead has come and gone. We arrived on Friday night just in time for the sky to open up and let loose a tremendous amount of rain. It didn't rain too long, and when it was finished we walked outside and took a deep breath of the fresh air it left behind. It rained a little during the week too and we were pleasantly surprised to see new shoots of grass coming up throughout the yard.

We also noticed the telephone company had been out and run the line underground for our new telephone service. I believe they took a lot of time and went out of their way to map the route of the line through every brand new blade of grass that had just sprouted. I could not believe how many just sprouted seedlings were sacrificed for the phone line. Oh well, we wanted a phone line and now we have one. I should just be thankful and sew some more seeds.

We spent a great deal of Saturday installing the phone wire from the house so the phone company can hook their line up to it. That involved digging through a fair amount of rocks - but I'm proud to report we sacrificed very little new grass for it. Hopefully the phone company will be there this week and hook the house up to their line and we'll have a dial tone next weekend. I'm going to pick up the DSL modem this week so Bernie can install it next weekend. We've decided it's worth the monthly bill to have internet connection. While we are striving to get back to basic living, we do appreciate the value of the internet for communication and for information. It's one of the few "luxeries" we hope not to have to give up.

I made some bird feeders this weekend from some 1 litre soda bottles. This seems like a great project to tackle with kids. I put some pictures and a narrative of it on the website. Check it out.

We're heading back out to the homestead next weekend and, as always, have a list of things to accomplish. I'll post when we return and will hopefully have some pictures.

Live Free,
Penny