While we had Covid…What’s Really Happening at Ridge Haven.

Yes…we survived Covid-19!

And we are still standing, Praise be to God. But now we have natural immunity!

Covid on the Homestead

I’m not gonna lie and say it was no big deal. But I am super thankful that it wasn’t much worse, because we know it could have been. I am thankful for a wonderful and well-researched doctor and friend, who helped us get through with timely care and effective treatment. Hitting it hard early really helped to turn my rough case into a manageable one. Because of this effective early treatment, we did not have to find out how bad it could have gotten.

My covid woes

I am a red-head, after all, and my kind are known in the medical community to be problematic when it comes to our response to medication and our pain response. I don’t think that means we’re wimps, just that our bodies don’t behave in a predictable way. Not saying I’m not a wimp. I just don’t do pain well. ?‍♀️ 

Again, we are just very grateful.

I went from unable to get out of bed, without even the energy to lift my phone to read a text (gasp!) to up on my feet feeling pretty decent within the second day after beginning aggressive treatment. Then it was back and forth for the next two weeks, of tiredness/some respiratory symptoms, but never to the extreme as at the beginning.

Even now, after three and a half weeks, I have lingering reminders of the unwanted guest, but i still feel nothing but gratitude for my recovery, my husband’s recovery, and the mild cases that our boys seem to have gotten.

While we were sleeping…

While we were down with COVID, things happened around our property.

What things??

Ad

Literally the day I was so sick, they rolled in with a mini excavator, ready to tear up the dirt and install lines for our well and solar. And dig they did!

While I had Covid…

While I nursed one of the worst headaches in history, I could hear the crashing of the metal bucket as it hit boulders, dirt, and, apparently, three (or more, we are finding out!) water/septic lines. Happy for the progress, yet unable to tolerate the heavy equipment noise, I buried my head and groped around our room until I found Greg’s new pack of earplugs. I shamelessly pilfered those, as every noise seemed magnified on that day.

With a scarf over my eyes to shield any bright light, and with my ears plugged, I tried to rest, while the guys worked industriously.

A Whole New World—all torn up!

By the time I dragged myself out of bed, some 24 hours after starting some quality time with my pillow, I hardly recognized our property. I can only describe it as all torn up.

I guess that’s what they call progress. Who was I to judge? I’d been hiding out and puking all day.

Over the next week, the ground, which had been dug up to create channels every which way, began to fill in, as my family added electrical wire for the solar panels, water lines for our holding tanks, more wire and pipe for our solar well pump, and some caution tape thrown in as a warning to future diggers to watch out! (Not lying about the caution tape.)

They got a ton done!

No pun intended, but I’m sure they moved a ton of dirt!

Ridge Haven Day Spa and Nature Retreat

And I was mostly unaware of all of that, since I earned my no-expenses paid, mini vacation, complete with no floors, no bed, and no potty access. Oh, yeah! I got the package deal! Covid, plus the woods privy!

And mud. Lots of mud.

Did I mention that our water pump went out during covid too? Why not add that to the list of amenities which our spa includes?

Thankfully, we have busy beavers for sons! They just kept chugging along. Didn’t miss a beat, even though I believe now they they both had Covid.

Covid Homesteading Accomplishments

So…during our covid adventure (and yes, Greg got it too), our home improvement project accomplishments included:

• Adam ripped out and replaced/sealed all the main floors in our camper after a water leak pretty much destroyed it.
• Andrew replaced the camper water pump
• I ordered a mattress after several nights of severe back pain for me and Greg after sleeping on makeshift memory foam pads on the floor.
• Andrew built all the railings for the stairs and loft area (which took like two weeks—it was tricky). This included cutting 6×6 posts, planing and routing edges on the railings, and a lot of calculating! Adam helped cut rebar and ground rust from them.
• I painted rebar spindles
• Greg and Adam installed our solar panels
• Greg wired the solar panels
• Adam finished the shop (house) bathroom floor, which Andrew built
• Everyone helped install pipe from the well to somewhere up the hill where we will have a holding tank.
• The guys fixed three + broken water/septic lines
• We extended our garden terraces with the excavator
• Greg took down four trees shading solar panel area.
• Andrew framed me a half wall behind my kitchen stove and in our bathroom
• I painted some faucets and bathroom fixtures.
• Greg installed the solar well pump!

• 

Whew! We’ve been busy!

We kind of hated to see our quarantine time end! We got so much done!

Teen Builders

Don’t let me fool you! Much of this list was accomplished by our boys while we lazed around in our hammocks sipping lemonade. Some days I almost didn’t even have enough energy to make them a project list, and that made them so sad that I did my best to come up with something. You know that teen boys don’t like to have their mammas forget them! ?

And you’ll notice my contributions are quite extensive. I basically made lists and painted between taking naps. A can of spray paint can do wonders! But it doesn’t quite compare with the other awesome things the guys did!

I thought about making a separate blog post for each project. But LIFE is not quite allowing that just yet. For now, I’ll include a few pictures of each project, then if I can add more detail in future posts, I will link them here.

Kudos to my homesteading men, who have outdone themselves over the last three weeks!

We are that much closer to our goal of living like civilized folks!

Come, Sit a Spell

Maybe one day soon we can have y’all out, and we can drink water from our well out of mason jars, while gazing upon the lovely hickory floors and rustic railings, all the while smiling about our long-ago troubles with Covid and the privies in the woods!

Stay well out there, and enjoy water from your own cistern…or well!  

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