The day after we finished the air conditioning work, a routine septic tank inspection revealed that the outlet baffle (something I never knew existed, and more critical than the inlet baffle) in our underground concrete tank had completely deteriorated. Trust me, this is a bad thing. (If you really want to understand exactly what happens when your flush the toilet, I can now explain the process with the help of color-coded diagrams provided by the sewage hauler - though my recommendation would be - don't ask!)
Suddenly we needed to hire a septic-specialist as well as a backhoe operator to unearth the 900 gallon concrete tank, buried four feet underground and located inconveniently right in front of the goat shed. (Really poor planning when someone built this house fifty years ago!!) What on earth would I do with Emerson and Elliot for a week while their yard was being excavated? They graciously offered to move into the bedrooms of my away-at-college daughters, but my husband corralled them with a temporary boundary just outside the shed door, eliminating more than half of their usual space and causing them intense distress. What happened to our world?? Why does it end here??
For my husband, the greatest challenge was to dismantle a section of the yard fence which he had built nineteen years ago. I watched as he dug and heaved at a four-foot high support post that just wouldn't move, even when he wrapped it in chains hooked to the tractor. Only after the tractor nearly bucked him off did he admit defeat.
"I guess that post isn't coming out," he admitted. "I just remembered I set each post in concrete two feet below ground when I built this."
Well, that makes sense. After all, we did design the fence to contain our knee-high toddler twins nearly two decades ago. At least I never had to worry that I'd run inside to refill their juice cups and return to find they'd yanked out the fence posts and crawled into the road!
The project is nearly complete, we can once again flush and shower, and the goats have their yard back. New posts are securely set right next to the old ones, which got sawed off at ground level. Somehow this required an eighty pound bag of concrete, but I have learned to just look the other way. Apparently you can never use too much concrete...
Here's why I'm in a panic now. Yesterday Emerson got into the trash pile, and when I grabbed him I saw what he was so voraciously devouring - the bag of leftover dry concrete powder, which looks very similar to the mineral mix he loves.
"Don't worry," my husband assured me. "It would only harden if you mixed it with water."
Great - considering he just drank an entire bowl of warm vinegar water!!
Suddenly the septic tank blockage doesn't seem so bad. Wait and see...
I remember when Mike labored long and hard to give his girls a lovely place to play. Seems like only yesterday.
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