The next day the sinks have drained all by themselves, with the help of lots of lye. So yeah! Success!
Then I get word that nope, things have not improved. Sigh.
A call back to the plumber and he’s talking about getting a guy in with a camera and doing some sort of geo-locating or something or other. I’m already two plumbers calls and two septic tank calls into this deal and we are no better off. I can hear the cash register sound in my head adding up more and more expense, plus we are literally going to go bumping around in the dark with this next plan.
Back into the rain we go. Vicente and this time Felix dig out the entire septic tank and find the line coming from the house to the tank. I get the plumbers back out and we cut the line and install a clean out. We find that the line is completely full of crud, backed up from the previously full septic tank. It is mostly grease and gunk. After snaking the line from the septic tank end for about 10 minutes via our shiny new clean out, water starts to flow. After a few minutes of running water in the house, the line starts to run clear. Success!
It only took three plumbers calls, two septic tank calls, about five hours of hand digging, and two hours of probing, to get it fixed. All in the never ending rain. What does this have to do with farming? Well I’ll tell you. When you have an emergency, and if you’re poo doesn’t magically flow away, I promise you it is an emergency. You have to drop what you are doing and handle it, now. However when you are farming, you have to handle that too. Animals have to eat. Every day. So now you are doing double duty and things get tense. In addition to dealing with this septic tank, which took about a week from start to finish we also had the following going on concurrently.
We had visitors in town, staying with us for two days from New York. I barely saw them.
I had beef ready at the processor, and people waiting on me to pick it up. It is about three hours total to get the meat and put it away. I was two days late picking up the meat.
My back is still messed up from the wreck. I had a Doctors appointment that I had to get to.
We are on week three of our kitchen remodel. We have COMPLETELY demoed our kitchen. No walls, no floors, no ceiling. It’s like the kitchen was never there. So we are entertaining out of town guests without a kitchen, not to mention home cooking every meal without a kitchen.
SWMBO wrecked her Suburban. One of the kids left her door open and SWMBO didn’t realize it and sprung the door backwards as she backed out of the garage. The suburban was locked in the garage by the now ruined door, awaiting a body man to come and fix it during this time.
We had a new employee start with us, who on her second day I had to take to the hospital with appendicitis and stay with her till she was released.
While hauling pumpkins from Dunn, NC (that Spork and I hand loaded, 18 pallets), I blew a tire on the trailer and had to go get it replaced. This involved driving to the airport with a 32 foot long trailer and waiting two hours while the tires were replaced with new ones.
I’d already committed to the wife that I’d watch the kids while she went somewhere with Spork. That had to be done.
All this was ongoing and in progress, along with farming, in the middle of the week that this septic tank was clogged.
Things got a little tense around here. Miguel had his own issues on the farm he was dealing with and food has started to really flow from the market again so we are getting multiple loads per day.
It was a really hectic week for everyone involved but if you are a farmer you just put your head down and get it done. Septic systems, sick animals, bad weather, they all happen and are part of life. No sense whining, just figure it out and get it done.