Here is where we are about 3PM

This is what it looks like after the tower of scaffolding was taken down. The trim is on, painted and caulked. Hopefully, we won't be doing any more high work on the face of the silo. Of course, we still have to side the sides, but one of them is half done and is easy to get to. The other is another thing altogether.

We finished up today talking with Kenny the plumber. He is starting the waste lines (again) tomorrow (really!) with a buddy. We have a couple of nightmare plumbing maneuvers where Sir Issac Newton's 1st law of will have to be violated.

The day ended with a HUGE downpour, part of the "April in like a lion". Those must be dandy-lions that April showers bring. :-)

Where does the Stinking River end?

This is where the Stinking River ends, at least for us. Just to the left of the picture is the culvert under the road, and you can see the current in the water as it flows down here. We hope to cut a new ditch in alongside the road and under our drive way to divert the stinking river.

We shall see.

Return of the Stinking River

For everyone who didn't see the Stinking River, here it is. You can see that the river flows from the Stinking Pond on my neighbors property. It actually comes from the road and the corn field south of us. All the soil is about 6 inches deep with limestone underneath, so drainage is slow.If it rains enough, like yesterday, to saturate the soil and we get a heavy downpour the pond fills up, and then it slowly drains across our property.

Talked again to my backhoe guy, Tim, about adding a negative slope to the frontage ditch to send the river along the road and straight to the culvert. I will add another picture to show where the rest of the water goes.

A stinking river runs through it

To steal a line from a recent Robert Redford movie I really should have either seen the movie or read the book, but I haven't. What I did see was a river that was undocumented on our property this past weekend. Ohio received a boatload of rain this weekend after a steady work-week of the same. So the ground was well saturated before the heavy rain on Saturday and Sunday morning. After I dropped Linnea and the kids at the front door of church I took a trip to the property and was very surprised to see a two acre lake on the neighbors property that was flowing through our pine trees and off into the oversized culvert under the road. It looked drivable, so I put the truck into 4WD LO and sloshed through. Good news, the house site was dry and high above the water. Bad news, the garage was flooded (well, the site for it anyway). And Linnea's art studio/temporary storage site was in the middle of the river that had appeared under the pine trees. The roadside culvert under our driveway was blocked but that wasn't a problem as the ditch was higher than the neighbor's lake. I think that once we get the backhoe on site regrading the ditch and clearing the culvert will solve the overflow problem. But that afternoon when Linnea and I were trying to solve another problem we got into a fight over the art studio location. I, with great clarity and objectivity, pointed out that it was the dumbest idea since eating a certain apple to put the art studio in the middle of the seasonal river. Linnea, with equal aplomb and self control, insisted that she could design a footing that would allow the water to pass under without problems. I do have to say that this disagreement was resolved without name calling or really getting mad at each other. The dam broke when I said, "Fine, you can put your art studio in the middle of the stinking river!" That brought on giggles and healing and eventual resolution. We have been repeating that phrase all week. I guess the art studio will be in the middle of the "Stinking River".