Hippie Camp

This weekend found me living in what appeared to be a hippie camp. LC and ET came out on Friday evening because they so very generously agreed to help me install gutters on the old house that sets up above the Airstream for a rainwater catchment system. As the weekend rolled along I realized that to passers-by (yeah, like there was a ton of traffic) we looked like a backwoods hippie camp, complete with the following:
outdoor dishwashing station
handmade benchery at the fire pit
dogs running around
jugs of hauled in drinking water
bundles of herbs hanging everywhere to dry
people cooking stew over a fire in a dutch oven (thank god it was beef stew so we
weren't really hippies...)
tussie mussie bundles of flowers being made by a lovely lady who was dancing around
admiring the beauty of the wild flora
strange Belgium men dosing off on the ground in the afternoon sun
fresh warm milk being drunk straight from the gallon jug from strange Belgium men
and of course the rainwater catchment project.

ET was awesome in initiating an early starting time for putting up the gutters, and he rocked it in the hot-ass muggy September sun. When the water flowed the wrong way, he patiently adjusted the whole entire thing. When the water jumped over the front lip of the gutter, he came up with a tin flap that caught the jumping water and sent it back into the flow. LC rocked the tussie mussie scene while grooving to Michael Jackson on my ipod. She also rocked the dutch oven with some killer beef stew. It was a really productive session. As soon as I get paid again I am going to buy a 250 gallon water storage tank to set under the gutter, and a hose or pipe to gravity run the water down to a shower that I will somehow rig up with a water heater. Winter will find my hippie camp flowing with steamy hot rainwater showers.

Thanks ET and LC!

Note- the pictures show the old house with gutter, the old house in relation to the Airstream (with the awesome temporary power pole in the foreground, one of the lovely benches ET made me (with tussie mussie by LC) and the human hippie water station.