As We Were Breaking Ground On Our Pole Barn Build, THIS Happened

This week on OSRL. Today is the day. Time to break ground on the next section of the house. We have a bit of an emergency here. I just saw one of the worst things I could ever see out here. Something I hoped I would never see. How's it going y'all? Welcome back to the channel. Now if you caught our last video, we went over the plans for the next phase of the house. We're very excited to get going, but there's a lot to do before we even put shovels in the ground. Now I kind of have some measurements already laid out, but I'm going to just double check things, get them nice and accurate, so I can begin building. It's tough kind of being out here by myself and trying to get some footage on windy days like this, but I'm going to try my best for you. So once I confirm these measurements, then we can get started. Man, there's so much to do, so little time to do it, and I'm going to be putting in the order for the materials needed pretty soon. So it's very exciting. All right, how's it going everyone? Well, today has been a cold... The blast from the past. All right, she's kind of excited because she's been kind of... it's been a cold, windy, rainy day like I was saying. When it's like that, she kind of just hangs out on the couch out here, and so she's probably got a lot of energy to burn. I'll probably take her for a walk. But yeah, it's been getting some rain. So far we are at almost three-tenths of an inch. You know, it wasn't really a good day for working out here, so I took this as an opportunity to head to town. Went to my home away from home, Home Depot, and put in a fairly large order. Of course, you know why. It's going to be a big project coming up and a big price tag on it. Well, not a big price tag, but for us it is. But very exciting. So I got a bunch of chores in town done while the weather was kind of not super pleasant. But hey, not a good day to work outside, run some errands, make good use of the time. All right, so because we've changed the dimensions of the house a little bit, I had to work on kind of squaring things up. I got things straightened out. You could see that had to get moved over a little bit, but we're looking really good. So now I think I can easily kind of get those post locations, then I can start digging. All right, y'all. Well, today is the day. Time to break ground on the next section of the house. And it's time to officially break ground. All right, first shovel full. Here we go. The first step in a journey of digging a trench is the first shovel full. So I'm done futzing around with the measurements. I think we're good to go. Everything's looking really good. So it's time to pull out the tools and start digging the trench that will act as the foundation for the straw bale wall. So I'm going to start here on the north side. We're going to get that trench dug in. Now the trench I'm digging here is going to be about two feet wide to accommodate the earth bags going in there. And it's going to be about a foot and a half deep. So it's about 40 feet of probably more. It's going to be a lot of digging, but it's what I do. Well, the winds are really picking up out here and I'm starting to feel a little rain. I'm going to keep on working unless the rain starts really coming down. I'm going to work through this wind if I can put on my goggles, but we'll see. We'll see if we get some more rain. Good morning, y'all. Man, well, yesterday was a barrage of definitely wind. Got a little bit of rain. You know, I'll take any little bit of rain we can get. So just looking at the gauge, we got about a tenth of an inch of rain. Not bad. Not bad at all. Not a lot, but every little bit helps. You know, the poly tanks are overflowing. So really nice to see. I know a lot of people have been asking about the cistern. I try to go in there as little as possible. I just let it kind of do its thing. Maybe I'll check it again someday, but right now there's a lot of work to do. So I completed one pass on that first trench. Looking really good. I probably got probably about six inches down. Probably got to do a couple more passes before that's ready to go. Just one step done on the new addition to the house. We have a bit of an emergency here. Our pipe leading from our water tank has a leak, and it's a pretty bad leak. And it's in probably one of the worst places that it could be leaking from. We don't have a valve before that point where we can shut the water off. So it's going to be a little more tricky to repair it. We got some silicone tape on there and it's still leaking a little bit, but it's a lot better than it was. Jim ran out to the hardware store to get something for a better repair. And I'm out here hanging out with my girl. Hey, my girlfriend. I got to hold her paw. But despite the kind of stressful start to the day, it's sunny today. Yesterday it was raining, it was cloudy and cold, and I was not feeling very well. I tend to get like that on days where the weather's not so good. Actually makes me feel sick sometimes. So it's nice that it's a little bit nicer weather today and I can be outside a little bit. Yesterday, even though the weather wasn't great, Jim was outside working. He was getting things moving with the house build, which was really great. You know, I've been thinking about that and I wanted to share with you a little bit, some things that you might not know about me and Jim, kind of our unique situation, and some of the reasons why I really appreciate that man. And also why I appreciate you so much. Recently, I discovered that I most probably have autism spectrum disorder. You know, I've had it my whole life, but just recently found that out about myself. And it really explains a lot about me. So it's part of what makes me uniquely me, but it does come with some challenges. You know, with those challenges, Jim has really been an amazing support for me. I know without him, I would probably be a hot mess. So one of the big challenges for me is sensory sensitivity. When we were living in the city, it felt like I was constantly being bombarded by just this overwhelming sensory stimuli, you know, all the noises and everything that's always going on in a city. And it was really stressful. And sometimes it was overwhelming. That was one of the big reasons why I wanted to move out to the country, just somewhere a little more calm and peaceful and closer to sort of gentle nature, sensory things that I enjoy. And when I expressed that desire to Jim, he was very supportive and he really made it his mission to make that dream a reality. Since then, he's worked nonstop to really build that sort of dream of ours together. Another challenge for me, which if you have been following us for a while, this is probably something that isn't surprising to you. I have some problems with social interaction. I tend to be very reserved, quiet. The autism is probably a big reason for that. I sometimes have trouble expressing myself and I have trouble with certain like social cues that for the average person, you know, they might not even think about it. It might come naturally to them. Getting on camera and speaking has been a challenge and that it's something that I've been working on. I know we've received comments over the years from people that maybe they pick up on my awkwardness. They'll say things like, oh, she looks distracted. She doesn't look happy or, you know, something about my facial expression that doesn't seem appropriate. People make assumptions and usually it's something like, it must be Jim. He's making her feel uncomfortable in some way or he's talking too much and she's not, he's not letting her talk. But that's not the case at all. And that's another area where Jim has really been great. He really understands me and he accepts me even if I am a little weird sometimes. And we've been able to work out how to communicate with each other pretty well. Another thing I struggle with sometimes is sometimes I feel really down and depressed. And one of the great things that I love about Jim is his sense of humor. Just a little cock goes a long way. That's what he said. Some people get irritated by that, but I love it. I need it. Some crack spackle. If you remember crack spackle, you're probably old. You know, on the daily, he tries to make me laugh or at least smile. And for someone who struggles with depression, I can't tell you what a great blessing that is to have someone that just wants to lift your spirits. I think a big thing, and this I'm sure you recognize from some of the projects we've worked on, but I tend to be a perfectionist and I get really caught up in the details of things. I want to make things look really nice, but also I like to plan things out. I want to know every step of the process and sometimes I get caught up in those steps. I get, I guess you could say, analysis paralysis where I'm overthinking it and then I either don't get started or I get stuck somewhere along the way and I don't finish it. As you can see with our dome build that's not completely finished, that's on me. The process I'm using is really time intensive. The plaster on the outside, for example, you know, it takes a lot of time and it can only be done certain times of the year. We can't do it right now because we're getting freezing weather still. So with that, you know, Jim is, one, he's very patient with me. But also he encourages me to express myself the way that I want to and he encourages me to, you know, sometimes with these projects, hey, we gotta, we gotta move on now. Otherwise it's never gonna get finished. When I'm too focused on the details, he can help pull me back and look at the big picture and keep things moving forward. Along with these other challenges, I suspect that I'm also dealing with fibromyalgia. Basically it means that I deal with a lot of muscle pain and stiffness. Certain times of the year, like right now, I find that I get these flare-ups and it makes it really hard for me to get things done. But then Jim comes in and he picks up the slack. He's a really hard-working guy and he makes sure that I'm comfortable. He wants to make sure that I'm taken care of. So, I mean, I couldn't ask for a better partner and I just want to share that, that appreciation. And I want to let you know that I appreciate you as well. I appreciate your emotional support. Just watching us, just sharing in our journey and our experiences and that means a lot to me. So I want to let you know that I do value you. I appreciate you and thank you for joining us. I just saw one of the worst things I could ever see out here. Something I hoped I would never see, but it happened. I was just about to start work again on that trench, but I usually kind of walk around the property kind of doing a visual inspection and then I just saw a bunch of water up by our polytanks. Just way too much water than we should have had considering the rain. This whole area over here in front of the polytanks was just flooded. So much water over there. I knew for sure there was definitely a crack and unfortunately we found the crack and it was just in the worst possible place we could have a break. So you can see right now it, well it's definitely muddy, but this is where all the water was. It's kind of soaked in by now and right over here is where we had the crack. The crack is right after this fitting right here and it's just in the worst possible spot. The only way I could fix this with like pipe is to cut part of this pipe off and replace it. Unfortunately we can't do that with the polytanks full. We would just lose all of our water. Now the cause of this is is definitely my fault. I'm going to take the hit on here. I think it came because I put straw on top of all the pipe. Now that might have helped during those really cold freezing temperatures, but maybe I should have cleared it off right away. I think leaving that straw on there, like because the temperatures were nowhere near cold enough to cause those pipes to freeze and burst. I'm thinking maybe some rodents got in there and I'm thinking probably UVA did this. It seems the most likely scenario. Maybe she smelled the rodents in the straw and then she pounced on it and then busted the pipe. Just my best guess as to what happened. So I probably should have cleared all that straw off as soon as the temperatures warmed up, but unfortunately one of the worst things that could happen has happened. The silicone tape we put on there just did a really good job putting it on. Unfortunately there's still a little bit of a leak, so we're going to have to take that tape off and we're going to try a much more durable, stronger hold. So hopefully this works, but we'll bring you along as we do this more robust repair. Okay it's cold so we're going to keep this quick. We got a good start on the foundation for the pole barn build. I wish I could have gotten more done, but emergencies pop up. What can you do? Many thanks to Jess. She's an all-pro. I'm just glad I was able to get her out there. You do the tape really well. I don't know if it's the nimble fingers or what. Hopefully that works. We're going to wait, let it dry out a little bit. We'll see if there's any leaks, but it's looking pretty good right now. But you know eventually, like I said, I want to redo that whole thing. I just hope it was going to be later than sooner. That's a really good reason to have satellite water storage around different areas. That way like your main water storage goes down. You have other sources ready to go. You're not locked into one storage and that's kind of what you were talking about a little bit. Like would it be nice to have an extra tank and we could pump some of that excess water into. I think it would be good to have an emergency tank and just like you know if you need to do any kind of maintenance on the the tank or cleaning or whatever. You know in hindsight I did that setup you know a long time ago, but had I had a chance to do it over again, I'd put those cutoffs right next to the tank and we wouldn't be having this issue right now. A little lesson to you. No big loss. Luckily we caught it right away. We got a big delivery coming up. I'm very excited about that. You excited about that? Yeah. Yeah very, very cool. Very important. So I got a lot of digging to do. I'm gonna go back and keep doing that. We're gonna cut this video now because she needs to get back in where it's warm. The sun, the sun went away. Now it's all cloudy and cold again. And windy. Don't forget the wind. All right y'all we'll catch you on the next video. Thank you so much for watching and being part of our journey. Bye.