Cheap …
Cheap wine openers are never worth it. I am seriously lucky that I have a husband who carries tools around with him. He used some pliers to open my wine bottle.. Relaxing night by the fire complete!
We started working on a trail to the highest point of the property this weekend. We decided to focus on this for several reasons.
We had a mini excavator rented for the weekend at the request of our soil scientist
We need a path to the place that we are going to put the cabin.
The Beginning
Steve starting at the beginning of the path we marked out. He is pulling out the big trees and I am coming behind him with the weed eater and limb trimmers to clean up the little stuff
Headlines
We now live in a town where the frontpage above the fold news is a teen who is about to inherit a third generation truck when he turns 16. I think that is pretty amazing, better than death, lies, politics, or scandal.
So, first…. the soil scientist. We had hoped that we could find another septic site that was closer to where we are putting not only the manufactured home, but also where the main house is going to be eventually.
Unfortunately, we found that almost the entirety of our land is made of clay! This is bad news for septic sites…. but really good news for ponds. Apparently, we can make ponds all over the property and they will hold water.
Because we had the mini ex rented on Friday, we used it over the weekend, first to work on a trail to the top and second to build a dam in the place we want to build a pond. We had hoped that we could find a path to the top that we could pull the trailer with all the supplies for the cabin to the top, but that didn’t happen. We couldn’t find a way that was safe or practical to drive. We hope to be able to contact the gentleman that owns the property behind us, he has a pathway along the fence line that we are sure a vehicle can safely travel. Maybe he will let us drive our trailer to the top.
It was A LOT of work to get all those trees out of the way. Well, maybe not for Steve (he was on the mini-ex all weekend) It would have been a lot easier if we had a skid steer or dozer, but we had a mini ex…. so we used what we had available. I used the weed-wacker (which I broke) and the limb trimmers, and the rake to clear. It took us 2 days to finish. We spent the first day marking and clearing the path… as well as digging holes for the outhouses. The second day, I cleaned up the trail (cutting limbs that would hit you in the face, and small stuff that the mini ex missed) while Steve worked on the pond.
Lesson Learned
I learned my lesson from the first time out on the farm. My eyes are thankful… although I forgot my contact solution and case for the overnight stay (I had to sleep in my contacts) so that was probably a wash… my eyes hated my both weekends
The pond needs to be built up, but the core trench is finished. We are going to either hire or rent a dozer to grade the driveway, then use the top soil to fill in more of the dam for the pond. Steve went back today to the farm today, since we had some light rain overnight, and found that…. the core trench is working already and starting to hold water. We are going to have to do some math and figure out how much spill-way pipe we need to handle the volume of water we may get for overflow, but that is a blog for another day. Eventually we will clear out some more of the scrub trees between where the double-wide is going to be so we can see the pond from the house. One day (soon) I will be drinking my coffee on the deck while watching my ducks swim in the pond!
I was pretty disappointed that we couldn’t find a way to the top. I know that we will figure out how to get our supplies up there… It will just take some time and ingenuity. On a positive note, we now have a path to the top! It started as a path never traveled and now it has been traveled at least 3 times. Charon and Dillon and the grandbabies stopped by to visit right as we were packing up so they were the first to hike to the top via the trail. Leia was definitely “not falling” all the way to the top, then she rode the Noni horse (I gave her a piggy back ride) on the way down. Emorie was in first place the whole way up, and “planted” thorn bush seeds all the way back down. I had a good time walking with them; I am so happy that they came to visit.
Outhouse
This is the first hole Steve dug at the cabin site, for the outhouse. We had a dueling cameras moment (I am sure he has a picture of me somewhere taking a picture of him).
I hope that this excitement doesn’t fade, or at least it doesn’t fade anytime soon. I am so ecstatic to be doing all of this really hard work on our land. I have never been the type to shy away from hard work, and like I said before this is “day 1” of forever hard work; I don’t want to lose this excitement. This is my dream and I am finally seeing it come true.
I made another video… I really hope they continue to be a thing…. so then I won’t be announcing it, you’ll just know that it is there. Here is a link.
“And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!”
View from the top
I can’t get enough of this
