This day started earlier then usual when we went out to meet the second truck of stones for our section of road. I thought we would have spare stones left over but there was just barely enough (we could use a few cubic meters more to fill a few weak spots). The really friendly and professional tractor driver (from our village) called us back soon after the stones were delivered (just in time!) and a couple of hours later he was here to flatten the piles of stone into what looks more like a road. We now have a relatively rain-proof access road – how wonderful!

We took advantage of the tractors visit to also bury a couple of large tractor tires that were lying around (we arranged them as a small two level pond – Andreea’s brilliant idea – our first constructive landscaping intervention), to pull out a few large cement and wood posts that were stuck in areas we had already cleared, to close a part of the water supply pipe that was still open (there is still more to be closed … long story) and to dig a shallow ditch for rerouting the electric cable that goes to the pump towards the main house (where we hope to soon have a decent electric panel).

I did some more wood chopping … then Andreea and I continued to work around our new pond. Rains are expected this weekend and it would be great if we could already channel that water into the ponds.

I drove out the village to change some euros but both banks were closed so instead I got us some ice-cream … made the trip worthwhile 🙂

Tomorrow we are heading out to the city to do some shopping (materials for the rocket stove, a rain-water collection barrel to feed the ponds, etc.) … Friday evening we are expecting delivery of our wood order … which we will have to stow away promptly to keep out of the rains.

Oh … and I forgot to mention that the day before yesterday we had a surprisingly fruitful visit from the long-expected Internet provider technician. He was surprisingly useful and constructive (not typical of Romanian service providers) and if all goes well we will have last-mile-wireless (we don’t have any communication cables that reach our place) Internet sometime during next week. They will be setting up an antenna in the town center, a second antenna on an electric pole along a road that leads to our place and from there there should be the required line-of-sight to place an antenna on the roof of our house … so all in all … almost everything is coming together and it looks like (given a lot more work still ahead of us) we are heading comfortably into winter.