Well, if you haven't guessed it by now, we are going to build a home! We've been in discussions with our friends at
Morton Buildings (yes, they do more than pole barns!) and have over the past month or so decided on plans, windows, doors, colors, and features. Whew! Lots of decisions, but really fun and exciting!
But in order to get to the west 15 acres with BIG trucks (semi-tractor trailers filled with steel, lumber, and doors and windows and of course concrete trucks for foundation and basement) we had to widen and provide an easy access. Currently the only access was down this big steep hill just south of the observatory. One had to cruise down the hill, go four-wheeling over a marshy area where a bridge/culvert had washed away years prior, and clamber up another just-as-steep hill. This would bring you to an eight foot wide (or so) berm which was the eastern boundary of a half-acre pond - which also had a long-deteriorated culvert washed out at one section. The "pond" was only about 2 feet deep surrounded by a wetland. The only way to our future building site would be an extremely narrow, steep slope over a washed-out ravine. Obviously, this would not do. And will not do for big trucks and trailers. Our "access" would have to come from another direction but I'll save the story of that adventure for next time! Anyway, this access was necessary so that we could use the fill which would be taken from the "basement" to widen the eastern access - the permanent driveway.
But I get ahead of myself. Before we could do any of the "permanent access/driveway" we had to actually make a way for the big JD 4720 tractor to get to the building site. And to do that, as I've already mentioned, we needed to replace some culverts and refill the coverings. January of 2017 has been oh-so-odd weatherwise. We had at least a week of above freezing temperatures which made a muddy spring-like mess everywhere but also gave us an opportunity to place these culverts, dig fill and cover them up. So the culvert-adventure began with Farmer's Husband Gary carrying the culverts on his JD 4720 down the big sloped hill.
No problem.
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| Farmer's Husband Gary bringing the culverts to the washed out area. There was snow cover but the ground underneath was pretty thawed. Nothing that a 4-wheel drive tractor couldn't handle. |
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| Getting closer to the marshy area. I typically go splashing my way through with the Gator but there seemed to be enough icey hard stuff on the surface that day that when I went over it the Gator stayed on the surface. |
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| But alas, the JD 4720 with loader and backhoe weighs a ton (almost literally) more than my Gator. And.....well,....progress suddenly halted amidst mucky, sticky, soft and wet marshy soil. |
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| Farmer's Husband Gary picked the back end of the tractor up with the stabilizer feet of the backhoe. While he was doing that and grabbing some old tree trunks, I went to the brick pile and grabbed all the broken but big concrete blocks I could fit on my Gator trailer. We filled the holes that the tractor made..... hoping to provide a way for the tractor to get traction - enough at least to reach some solid ground. |
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| Even the thick coarse tractor tire treads were filled with the mucky marsh. |
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| And we prevailed! I drove from the "front" with four wheel drive enabled and with the differential locked while in low gear. Gary "pushed" and lifted from behind on the backhoe. Together we marched up the hill and got to solid and firm ground. Whew! |
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| We replaced the culvert at the lowest point and then hauled fill from the farm to cover it and provide a way for trucks (at least farm trucks) to drive over without succumbing to the great marshy mire. |
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| The JD 3720 doing what it was made for! |
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| You can't even see the mega-ruts we made just hours (or was that days?) earlier. |
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| Interesting, the different colored clay fills from different areas on our farm. |
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Success! Dressed in winter gear and cruising on my Gator - the first vehicle to traverse our repaired site. There's more fill to be brought and the sides still need sloping - but its functional. Yeah!!!!
Today's Journey Joys: Warm January days, adventures in the mud, husband who uses innovative, creative methods when obstacles arise, warm coffee and hot, hot showers to warm (after c-c-c-old days working outside), sunny wintry days in February, promise of warmer days to come.
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