My Friends' Homestead

Today I went to visit my friend who is moving to a new property that she calls "the homestead." It's a place that isn't on any maps, has no running water, no electricity, no gas, and the building is currently being rebuilt. It's a project that is not without challenges.

I went there today with the twins because my friends asked me to take pictures down their well. I had no idea how to do this because there's really no light down there, so I researched and figured out some stuff to try.My day already started off bad for this project because my mag light wasn't working. I went to buy new batteries. That didn't work. The light bulb needs to be replaced. That's strike one.

I tried it with other flashlights and this is the result.
I realized that my light from above wasn't going to be helpful, so I went with just the lights that were lowered by the rope.
Well, it's a well established fact that there is water down there, but no matter how well the camera was braced, something was shaking too much for the 30 second exposure, and that was the only way to get enough light for the picture to show up at all.

I found myself without the right equipment to make it work. It was a shot in the dark (literally and figuratively) anyway.

So since I spent over an hour sitting on my knees in front of the tiny well trying to make something happen that really wasn't possible, we decided we needed a break. Besides, I heard the magic words "I need to go potty" out of the girls.

Did I mention that there are no bathroom facilities there?

Yup, I took the twins to pee in a bush. It's their first experience with that. Becca's first experience with that was at 2, so they were a little late in my book anyway.

Off we went to try and achieve this monumental task of peeing without a toilet. It's not easy for a girl anyway, but for a 4 year old girl, it's just horrible. "What's squat?" "Why can't we just use the potty?" "How do I make it come out if I'm not sitting?" "What do I do if I have to poop?" "I'm helping the flowers grow!"

It was a learning experience.

Then we went for a hike.
There was some climbing involved for the short ones.Overall, it was a fun time. It was a failed experiment with my camera, but we had fun seeing my friend's house.