Back to nine to five (or eight to four)

So, back to work. Co-worker called he'd been admitted to half-retirement because of his poor health. His knees can't keep up the work we do. He's only, what? ten years older than I am. But I haven't never been an athlete or even a fitnes fanatic, so it wouldn't probably be my knees that give up, I'd bet on brains.

Now I remembered what I was telling about in that post I deleted. Our water is running out. Last time we had decent rainfall was 2017! Last winter's snow didn't thaw, it evaporated. We had a little rain in spring, but it didn't filled ground water reserves much. We have a rather shallow well, and sometimes in very dry summers water level drops too low to comfort. A good thing was, that in spring '18 we had really heavy flooding with all that thawing snow, so last year reserves were filled to the brim.
I have been waiting for rain since June. At the moment there is nice dark grey cloud hanging in the sky - but it comes from wrong direction, so it will not rain here (there's a lake and a big hill which divert rain from that direction). If cloud comes from east it usually rains, and we haven't had eastern clouds forever. Last autunm's jet stream/tornado? We had few drops, when half a kilometer away there were loads of hail.

Ground water filters from rainwater really slowly, it could take more than a year for rain to become groundwater, so this drough is result of last summers drought plus this summer. If the snow wouldn't evaporated, it would have stopped ground water levels going low.

So for a few weeks we can't take a shower all six people at the same day (we have a pool to use, which is helping), if I need to wash laundry and fill barrels to water veg plot. I can use dishwasher (it uses very little water, if I do dishes by hand, I use more water), so we don't have to use imagination how to make food without making dirty dishes... I'm not going to use paper plates.
If we really were in trouble, we have our outhouse, so we could skip using wc completely. Now it's only recommendation to boys to go outside to pee...

But we can take this, nature will cope with this, it will be all right. This is not like drought in India or Australia or California or Africa. This is a mild inconvenience.

It s raining now, only slight mist but water nonetheless. I went to pick gooseberries on the other side of the field and yes! my clothes got soaked with rain. What a joy! 'Suma didn't think it as a joy, but she is content sleeping on couch under ys's duvet.

This is going to be an expensive autunm/winter. D started her first year at local college, and even if the shcool itself is free (they get free lunch and free health care)  books and other materials costs dearly. We have so far bought four books, some new, some used. 135€. Today we'll go and spend some more euros for other books! A positive side of this is that the only book shop hereby sells used books, so we don't have to buy from internet - now we can choose and even be picky to get books that have all pages etc... And she needs a new laptop for school.

I'm trying to find a ways to spend less money on everything. Not an easy task, but maybe achieveable.

Being self suffiecient completely is not realistic aim at the moment, probably never. But we can be self sufficient on firewood:
 

This is my first ever attempt on creative woodtsacking. Sorry about blur - I found out I had a fingerprint on the lense. Blurry brown structure behinf the tsack is our outhouse (lighter on the left is garage).

So I cheated... No, this outside structure makes this stack sturdier, like cross laminated timber. Inside will be filled.

Btw, i have myself split all wood this summer. With that lethal screw splitter, which should be banned... Old man installed an emergency stop wire, I have tested every day it works just to be sure.

We are not only busy bees (notice no smudge on the lense).

My watermelon!

Field of trees.Not the kind of forest I like - there is no undergrowth, it's dark and suffocating place. And trees are not growing well at all.

Luckily that is only a small area (1-1,5 acres) behind our forest, it belongs to old man's cousin. This kind of forestry in no longer wanted, it doesn't produce much (much less than if you just let forest to grow how it grows naturally). They thought in '50's and 60's that if you get rid of everything else than trees, trees will grow faster because there is no competition. Wrong, so wrong. Trees need their neighbours, they need mushrooms, undergrowth, biodiversity. This field of trees is silently waiting spruce bark beetles to attack.