Having a useable driveway is important, because nothing else can happen without it. The well-drilling company had been on standby at this point for almost 2 months. “As soon as there is a road in, I’ll call you back.” The day I got to make that call was a good day. And yet, nothing in this journey has come easily, and that wasn’t about to change now. George-the-Well Guy came out, evaluated the site, and said the soil was unable to support the 16,000 lb truck, while water would be pooling under the tires. It would end up mired to the axels and I’d have to pay for a bulldozer to haul it back out. I would need the area built up with shale before the well could be dug.

Well, the same guy who had bulldozed our road had also promised to scrape and shale the build site, so I called him again to say I’d be needing two more loads of shale when he did that job. And then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. Despite having taken the job weeks before the hurricane, the damage from the storm bumped many other jobs of the table; mine included. It was a full 8 stress-filled weeks before he actually showed up to prep our building site. It was a very frosty October 10 when he finished the job. We had planned to be finished building by this time, and we hadn’t even gotten started.

Shale in place, I called George-the-Well-Guy back, and actually made it into the job book. The next question was, how long would that take to happen? Oh well, we had made it this long, hauling water from 45 min away in 5 gallon buckets once a week. It hadn’t killed us yet. We could continue awhile longer.

All the same, having only 25 gallons of water (minus drinking water. That was seperate) available at a time forces one to prioritize. It takes roughly 15 gallons for me to do 1 week’s worth of laundry for the 5 of us. And that is with being sparing of water. So, one learns to wear slightly soiled outerwear and wash mostly the underthings that need it the most. And laundry day, when you must needs heat your water over the fire, and wash and wring and rinse and wring by hand, is a far different thing than tossing a load in the washer and going about your business.