Clearing the Woods

The bulldozer came on Friday, and knocked down a path for a driveway. The days following have been filled with cutting trees and burning brush. Between Jim and Tim, all the trees for the driveway are cut and hauled out. (Captions are on top of each pic)


The orange paint indicates the southern boundary of the driveway.



Tim on the tractor with the bush hog getting rid of the smaller growth.



This is a 'before' picture of the area where the garage and driveway circle will be located.



The bulldozer!





The start of a driveway! Yay!






Lots of trees to push over and/or cut down!



A nice, long, windy driveway through the woods- perfect!






We have LOTS of vines to get rid of. Not good. Some of the trees have really been strangled. We have a whole project in and of itself just de-vining and cleaning up the land to get the trees healthy.


The bulldozer just knocked down some trees and left them in the path for us to haul out.



One of the half-way 'after' pictures of where the driveway will come up and meet with the garage.



And just because every good job site needs a super in a chair...



Burning the brush with the Elmo potty in the background. Don't leave home without the potty.

Big brush pile!



Gigi loves playing in any dirt she can find. We chopped, cut, and burned, and she dug holes.














Two hard workers taking a break!






And clearly having too much fun!
All the cutting that took place over the past couple days. The stumps are left so the bulldozer and come and push them out. We'll haul them away afterwards.

The 'Dozer Guy

The 'dozer guy (the guy with the Bulldozer and other heavy equipment) came today for the first time, and the guys scoped out the driveway. We went and painted orange stripes on trees that will be removed for the driveway. Tim took the bush hog up and started clearing out areas at the top of the driveway where it's mostly scrub. It actually looks good- the makings of a real clearing.

Tomorrow (and quite a few 'tomorrows' after that) Jim and Tim will be spending the day cutting down trees and hauling them out. Exciting stuff.

Snakes

We went over to the Ridge on Sunday, and what did we find? Not one, but TWO snakes living on OUR property! I kindly (while swallowing screams) gave them their eviction notice. If they are not gone in 7 days time (it's not as if they have much to pack up and move so I figured 7 days was fairly generous), we will have to resort to more drastic measures.

Our "Scrapbook"

I've never been proficient at scrapbooking, but I wanted a way of capturing the building of our new home. A blog is the perfect way for two "techies" to accomplish the artistry of capturing memories.

We moved from the Midwest to the East Coast in October 2008. We found our building site in November 2008, and broke ground in October 2009.

Henceforth, The Building of Blackthorn Ridge.