My horse Georgie Girl loves her fresh clean water from our hand dug well. It is the first thing she wants when you come into the barn. Horses consume a lot of water and hay. It is a constant need for them and good for their physical being. Georgie Girl is very careful when she drinks not to drop any grain or hay from her mouth into the water bucket. The other two girls are not as careful as she is so she tries to get her water first.
The last few days my husband has been working on my pantry. Our house is very old as I have told a zillion times before on this blog. It was built in 1850 and had absolutely no insulation in the walls. What it had was little slat boards and cement. Then we had mice running behind that, inside the walls. I could not stand that! I would hear them and it would keep me awake all night. I knew they could not get to me, but I knew they were there! So my husband has been slowly taking that out and it is a big job. It is the way the ceilings are built too, so it all needed to be removed. When he is doing it, all that cement dust comes down on him, in his hair, eyes, mouth and lungs. It is in the air and we are all coughing for a few days afterwards. Not good! But it had to be done. So he has my pantry all stripped out now. All he has left to do now is the living room walls and ceiling, and half of the bathroom. The rest of the house is all stripped out and can be finished off.
Now I am cleaning up all that dust. I will be putting all our food and supplies back into the pantry for the time being. Since he has been working on putting our solar panels up on the barn roof presently, that is where our money has to go for now. The pantry I figure will be a job to do during the colder months and right now he has to get the solar system moved. This will give me a chance to see how I can organize it best anyway.
The pantry has one door out to the kitchen and one to the root cellar. During the day I open the door to the cellar a crack to let cool air in from the root cellar. At night I close that door and will be opening a window in the root cellar a crack. That cools the root cellar off and it will stay cool through out the day even in the hot days of summer. Opening the door to the cellar a bit during the day brings the cool air from the root cellar into the pantry and will keep it cool during the day. Eventually, my husband will finish the pantry off so it will be almost as cool as a walk-in cooler all the time.
Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole
3 comments:
Hearing mice run around would get to me too. Wow, what a huge job to take on. I hope it goes smoothly.
Your horse is just beautiful. She sounds very sweet. I love her already! (I am a bit obsessed with horses.)
It is called plaster and lathe boards...lol...my house has that, too. Your husband needs to wear a good mask. That stuff falling on him and in the air still when he works is dangerous to the lungs. I had things in the walls, too. It turned out to be rats and then squrrels...ugh. THEN, raccoons took over the attice and got between the first and second floors. It all gave me the heebie jeebies. By the way, mice can get into the cellar when you crack the window. Some hardware cloth/fabric helps...welded wire mesh in varying dimensions and can be applied with stapler.
Love your blog.
We are going to have the root cellar as mice proof as possible. Metal screens on windows and all openings plus covering the wooden boxes I will use for produce. They can and will chew through plastic if they have to.
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