Rural Gardening: Getting frosty on the November Homestead, 1 by darius

darius wrote:
A pair of breeding silkies sound like fun, Sue!

Well, after lots of agonizing on my part, and then yesterday a Committee from the County Health Department, the Environmental Services Dept., copies of the 26 year old septic permit, old satellite photos of our place, a couple of neighbors and a septic tank pumper, we finally located the septic tank. It's under an addition to the house and front porch! (Actually it's mostly under my living room.)

Very fortunately, the corner of the tank that has the lid is just outside the footers / concrete block foundation to the addition, so all I had to do for pumping access was tear off the front steps. And, the tank and leach field are in good working order! The Distribution box is 3' under the hosta bed, and most of the leach field is in the front yard and partially under a flower bed. However, the far end of the leach field trenches does run about 15 feet into the area I just sheet-mulched for a new garden bed, but the whole flatish area above it (where we thought the leach field was) is now available for more garden extension and a couple of shade trees next year.

The foot of mulch/chips I put over the end of the leach field will need to be removed, and one huge overgrown shrub in the front yard will have to go. But all in all, it's not nearly as bad as it could have been. What could have been $6,000-$9,000 for a whole new system will end up costing under $500 to fix what's here, and maybe another $500 for some heavy equipment to dig out a series of shallow bog ponds for greywater filtering.

I went to Lowe's last night for materials to build new front steps ($75), but might not work on them until tomorrow when it's supposed to be warmer and sunny.