Clearing

After a long week, we managed to close our land deal on Friday afternoon at 3pm. Before the ink could dry on the paperwork, we began work on our project.


We were joined on Friday evening by Laura's Uncle John who arrived with a toolbox full of toys for our work the next day. In earnest we began clearing in the drizzle on Saturday morning at about 8:30am.


Couple of things to note:
1) If you gaze out upon your forested land and think you don't have much to cut...you're wrong.
2) Driveways are nice, when they're less than 130'.
3) Clearing land by yourself, is impossible.




The building site, before any clearing

Driveway entry, before

Driveway entry, after

One of the early lessons here is to keep your house as close as practical to any pre-cleared roadway. We entered into this thinking we wanted maximum privacy, which remains true but over 100' in the woods off of a private road is more privacy than we know what to do with. We very quickly revised the location of the house to be closer to the private road. The septic field is set, designed and permitted. Had I this to do over, I would've waited until the lot was cleared to spend the $400 to design the septic system. Lesson learned.

Clearing was difficult work. Thanks to John for two days of hard work and to Gareth for his help on Sunday we were able to make great progress this past weekend.



Surveying the drive

End of day one

The Clearing - 2 days in the making

John & Gareth - off gassing

Dowsing for water

Robert Krieg joined us Sunday afternoon to dowse for water. Using his sticks he quickly found a vein of water, denoted by the sticks moving from straight to crossed in a matter of a foot. He'll be back again in another month after the driveway is in place to mark the final drill locations.