Have you heard of Murphy’s Law? It states; “Anything that can go wrong, shall.” This seems to be the rule of thumb for our homestead this week.
Homesteading is full of challenges right. You know how it goes, just when you have a plan and think you have it going on…BOOM! It all changes, the plans need to be reworked, and frustration sets in.
Did you ever notice the old saying “when it rains it pours” is actually pretty dead on in life sometimes? This was our week…
Self-Reliance Challenge: Murphy’s Law
Bad Luck Started the Week Off…
To start the week off, one of the cats had 2 kittens about 3 or so weeks ago. They were cute as buttons and playing a lot. They were cute, loveable and seemed healthy.
Within 3 days of each other, they both suddenly died. For no reasons we can tell, just died. I was heartbroken to say the least. This was the start of the Murphey’s Law curse.
Murphy’s Law Struck Again by MidWeek…
As if losing the kittens wasn’t bad enough, we are still trying to contain the black mold in the bedroom. We had to bring our bed into the living room, rewash all of the clothing in our room, and pretty much seal the room off completely.
We figured since it rained most of the week we would be able to tear down the addition to the house which was our bedroom and just put new siding on the original house over the weekend. That would have worked but it has rained heavily every day since last Wednesday and is supposed to rain through next weekend. Now half of the wall and most of the floor are even worse, even after spraying with bleach.
And Just When You Think It’s Over…
Already devastated at the loss of those poor kittens, overwhelmed by black mold that was spreading, and contemplating building an arc to survive the torrential rains, the well quit! Yes, quit. I did dishes one minute and the next minute nothing. Ughh…what next?
After replacing both electric boxes, or whatever they are on the well, we still didn’t have any water so we had to call a well repair service. Three days and $65.00 later the man said we had a direct short somewhere. But guess what? They don’t do electrical repairs.
I paid $65.00 to be told to call an electrician! Needing a bath, being ready to pull out every last hair on my head like Brittany Spears did, I call the Ac guy and begged him to come help us.
Murphey’s Law struck again…
Don’t you know that apparently when the original well was installed some 15 or so years ago, they just buried the 220 line right in the ground? No conduit to protect it, and only about 18″ deep! I guess when my wonderful man put the clothesline in he must have hit that line with the post hole diggers!
He only nicked the coating but with the rains every day, the water seeped down that 18″ and shorted out the line. 250 feet of 220 line, the same amount of conduit and with the free and helpful hand of a friend, we got our water back on Saturday.
What About Our Plans For This Week?
Ha! They didn’t happen. It is ironic though, my plans were to install rain barrels. Funny huh? Oh well, I don’t think I could have bought enough barrels to contain all the rain we got anyways! Maybe I should have installed a cistern. We would have had enough water for the entire year by now. Like I said…Murphy’s Law.
Week 4: Plans and Goals…
This last week of the challenge we decided to wing it. Since we had to change the whole house around seeing that we lost a bedroom, we have a lot of tasks to accomplish inside our home. Our living room is now my dining room…
and the other half is my office…
My Dining Room is now my Living Room…
It’s small but cozy…
Now that the rooms are where they need to be AGAIN…I will probably paint, freeze more vegetables and take it easy. Homesteading is full of challenges and it was easy to get overwhelmed this week for me. I hope you had a better week than we did!
Make sure you check out the other bloggers that are doing the Self-Reliance Challenge during May below as they all are striving for the same overall goals as we are here at 15 Acre Homestead. Until next week, Happy homesteading and good luck on your journey towards Self-Reliance.
Click to visit other bloggers taking the Self-Reliance Challenge
Nancy – Nancy On The Homefront
Kathi – Oak Hill Homestead
Robin – A Life in the Wild
Candy – Candy’s Farm House Pantry
Farmgal – Just Another Day on the Farm
Ashley – Practical Self Reliance
ShawnaLee – Homegrown Self Reliance
Frank – My Green Terra
Maria – Maria Zannini
Lisa Lynn – The Self Sufficient HomeAcre
I’m so sorry about your kittens and your horrible week, AnnMarie. 🙁 I hope next week is much better.
I know how hard it is to lose pets…so sad.
Thanks Lisa! It has definitely been a rough one this week!
What a rough week indeed, I am so sorry about the kittens and the mold, I have had to deal with a mold issue, it was a lot of work to get it dealt with. Your new rooms look very cute.. hope next week works better for you.
Thanks so much, Val, for the kind words. I guess it can always be worse right! The mold issue has definitely been a huge challenge! I’ll be glad to get it taken care of for sure. Thanks for stopping by!
Poor kitties. It makes me wonder what killed them. I hope whatever it was, it’s an isolated incident.
re: mold
I had to deal with mold at my last house. It is a huge headache. The problem with mold is that bleach isn’t enough. All it takes is one mold spore to drift elsewhere and start reproducing. If it’s on any porous surface like wood or plaster it’s almost impossible to eradicate without replacing the infected area.
Good luck.
Hello Maria,
I worried about the mold getting the kittens but we still have the other cat with 5 healthy little ones of the same age that are running around just fine. So I may never know. We have a disaster restoration service coming in so hopefully the problem is almost over. Thanks for taking the time to read my posts!