Wow, what a week! So much happened and it all ended with a bang! (or a big crack!, I’ll get to that)
I took this last week off with my last week of paternity leave and I spent a good deal of time out at the land. Only camped out Friday to Saturday though. So I was coming home most nights.  (Lots to read so if it is too boring just look at pictures and call it good  )

Monday – I tried to get a little done before the mechanic showed up, but the machine didn’t work well. So stopped trying around 11a.m. and sat around reading until 1p.m. when the percolation county guy came to evaluate the soils in the exploration pit.  He pulled 4 very different soils out of the pit and decided we would need to test two of them for the system (See pic. Layer 1 was the top, layer 4 was the bottom. We will test layers 2 and 4, which had the most sand in them).  After that, the mechanic showed up and switched out the two fuel filters.. and viola! I was back in business. That was the best case scenario and I was SO happy it was an easy fix.

Tuesday – I moved a TON of dirt down off the ridge and I “finished” the driveway up onto the ridge!  It’s still too steep and is not the final product but I was able to drive my 2-wheel drive Nissan up to the ridge! That was very exciting. It was a tad risky as I was by myself.. I could have gotten stranded, but it all worked out.

Wednesday – I took Andrew up with me and we were planning on working and camping out together.. but we got snowed out. Karianne came up to have dinner with us.. but after telling me where to plant a few trees she left with Andrew. I stayed behind and moved a few bigger trees and widened our original driveway right off of the road. Other than that I didn’t get much done due to the snow and went home early.

Thursday – I got up to the land pretty early and had a run in with a bunch of turkeys! It was really cold that morning, I had to wait for the cab to warm up so I could get the ice off the windshield.  I tried moving dirt with the dump trailer and it worked really well. Only handles 4 to 4.5 bucket loads of dirt.. Not the most efficient way to move dirt, but it is keeping the run time on the excavator down so less diesel to burn so I’m good with it.  I spent some time collecting the bigger rocks out of the ridge and starting building a rock retaining wall on the uphill side of my crossing over the culvert. I also widened the crossing to be a very nice wide crossing.

Friday – I went up to stay the night, so first thing I got the dump trailer and the Yukon over on the ridge and then destroyed our driveway access to the main road. I was committed to finish our new driveway or I wouldn’t be going home Saturday! Where it dropped down off of the main road it was way too steep so we had lengthen it out so we could keep the grade below 8%.  I extended the road and only had to build it up a bit at the end to get out when my plan failed miserably.  Turns out that even though I had the dump trailer hooked to the car the dump trailer battery will still die if you use it over and over again.  So the battery died and I couldn’t bring any more dirt over to the beginning of the driveway. ……………. Even though I had done a great job… I didn’t have a lot of options so I tore up a section of the driveway to borrow enough dirt to make a ramp to get out so I wasn’t stranded.  

Saturday –  Didn’t have a ton to do without the dump trailer battery, but I had some friends come up early morning and showed them around and then my mom came up with Karianne and the kids as well so we took some time to show her around. Turned into quite the hiking trip but my mom was a great sport :).  So I spent a bit more time collecting rocks from my culvert rock wall and then in the end I decided my best use of time would be to cut the ridge down to the final level (had about 4 more feet to go) and just make a big pile of dirt.  So I start in and BAM! The big crack. I broke the excavator for reals this time! The track broke. Which .. happens.. and people will fix it.. but my initial guess is a 3k repair, hopefully I am in the right ballpark, if it is more like 5k+ it could be a big hit. Big bummer but I feel more at peace with it than when I was worried about the engine last week. Sigh, oh well it will work out, we will find a way 🙂 .. 

Until the excavator is fixed the project is on hold. I will call tomorrow morning to see what I might be looking at! (the percolation test will be this Wednesday and Thursday. I guess there may still be some progress this week) 

Might not be a letter next week, but I’ll let you all know what they say tomorrow as far as fixing the track.  Wish us luck!