Septic Test: Pass or Fail?

Digging a test hole in the drainage field

 Yesterday, this back hoe came up the road and dug so deep I thought he was going to disappear in a mud hole...  We are considering hiring a contractor to put in a septic.  The first major hurdle is to test the soil to see if it's even possible and it is looking like it would have to be engineered and even that is not fail safe....  so we'll see and hear more later this week if our soil would hold a system.  As I stood near  the edge of the hole talking with the man who dug it, the sides starting caving in with several big thuds.  I quickly stepped back and realized how unstable this ground that we live on and call home, really is!  One of the tests was to drop the bucket down on top of the place that he dug up and watch what the soil does.  He viedoed it.  It rippled like a bowl of jello.  Standing water, saturated and dense clay is what we have.  Basically, no better than a bog.  We are feeling a bit discouraged about the future here...

Save my shoe!

While playing over the top of the freshly dug mud pile, baby lost his shoe in the muck. 

Got it!

 Big brother to the rescue!  What a hero!

How do we get this back on?

Wrapped up in our makeshift volleyball net and post...



The older kids pounded in some metal fence posts and tied a thick rope between two to serve as a makeshift volleyball net, just their heighth.  The ball is an oversized plastic beach ball like thing and we've had many a laugh trying to learn how to play. 

Here are a few more pictures from a couple months ago of other things the kids have designed to play on:

Well, never mind those pictures, I think they've been archived already... so I'll dig them up later for another post on creative Alaskan play equipment....