Happy Memorial Day!  I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday.  I am very grateful for all those that have come before us and served our country to give Karianne and I the opportunity to be crazy and try to do this project!

Summary:

Thursday Night: Doug came and helped figure out solar and to change oil filters on the excavator

Friday:  I moved A LOT of dirt (I know I say that a lot). I also made a final cut on the outer edge of the ridge down to “ground zero”
Saturday: Kenny came and ran the excavator while I cut in a hiking trail.

Monday: Finished (the main part) of the ridge to “ground zero” and marked out our house (garage/apt for phase 1 of the build)!!

The long version:

This weekend was very eventful! It was my off friday weekend so we had lots of time to get things done!.  We also got several visitors this weekend! That was a lot of fun.

We headed out Thursday as a family to go be on the land. I left right after work and Karianne and the kids met me up there. Doug also came up after work to help us get the solar figured out.  In the end we decided I fried one of my camper batteries and the charge controller… doh!. So I will need a new trailer battery and I decided we will buy a big inverter that will eventually be used for the house. So it will charge our batteries and give us AC power whenever we need it. That will be cool but those aren’t cheap. Doug found a cool company, Growatt, that makes an all in one inverter/charge controller for about $2500 instead of the $7000 most companies are charging. (I think we will need 3 or 4 of those for our entire solar project but we will just try out 1 for now) Lots of new products in the solar market with prices coming down so that is cool. We also changed the filters again on the excavator. Not sure if that problem will go away or if I will need to change filters often to keep the excavator running well. I don’t know that I want to dive in and figure out the root cause (cause it could be spendy, but if I don’t .. maybe I’m hurting the excavator? Who knows .. I’ll roll the dice and change the filters as long as that keeps working 🙂 )  Doug also got to spend a little bit of time in the excavator. I saw a few smiles pass across his face. I think he enjoyed it.

Friday I pushed really hard and got a ton done! Lots of time in the excavator!  I made a final “lap” around the outside of the ridge cutting it down to the final elevation.  As I went around the outside I moved all the dirt to the middle of the ridge. And then I started ferrying the dirt down off the ridge. It really is the wrong machine to move dirt from point A to point B.. but it is all I have so I am making do.  I know I have said it many many times…. but I moved A LOT of dirt .   But by the end of Friday we had the beginnings of “ground zero” in place!

Saturday

Kenny, McKay, and Alivia all came to visit!  Karianne and James and Benjamin went home Friday night so it was just Sam Andrew and I. I still had A LOT of dirt to move down off the ridge so I lined Kenny out and let him go at it for 3 or 4 hours? By the end I think he really started to get the hang of it 🙂  .. I did a quick calculation and I now have about 130 hours behind the joysticks. Crazy!  Anyhow I got a nice break and decided to cut in a “show and tell” trail for visitors. (sorry mom I didn’t have that in place when you visited!!)  So now we won’t be bushwhacking our way around the property when we show people around. It was fun to get a little bit of time to do something other than move “a lot” of dirt 🙂  Thanks Kenny!.  Oh yeah.. Kenny and I lost the kids for a bit. Sound carries really well out there so I was really surprised they didn’t answer our calls.. It all made sense when Kenny found them in our drainage culverts!!!! I about died. They were able to crawl all the way through the 120ft and back though!  I guess I never instructed the kids in the excavator safety talk not to climb in the culverts.. doh!..  Anyhow, it was a good day!

Monday we finished grading to ground zero!. We got the dirt away from the ridge where the house will be. And we marked out the garage location!.  Only bummer is that I think that I want to cut another 2-4 feet off the ridge. Now that we have seen how the house fits I think I will need a little more room……… It will be better in the end, just super excited to move tons more dirt 🙂 Also we held Carter captive so Nate and Amanda would come visit .  Our friends Jeff and Jo Brown also came up for our First Memorial Day BBQ on our land!  It was very warm today!  Both Nate and Jeff seemed to enjoy giving the excavator a go as well 🙂  It was fun to chill a bit and not be going full speed to develop the land. Our kids ran around our trail 10 or so times with their friends. It was a great day!  Look closely at “Monday – Ground Zero!” and you can see a few flags that we used to mark out the house. We are finally starting to see our vision come to life! So fun!

Lastly on the paperwork side of things, we got our subdivision application submitted! Super excited about that. That is a huge step for us to be able to get a building permit. Hopefully the application will sail through the lengthy process.

Until Next Week!

Mark