5, 6 Pick Up Sticks

I checked on the snow status on Friday and the land was still mostly covered. That allowed me a beautiful Saturday of BBQ and home brews with family and friends and by Sunday morning the snow was mostly melted. It was supposed to rain, but partly sunny skies prevailed and I fired up the chainsaw and got to work cleaning up the mess left behind by the loggers my great uncle had hired to clear the land. All in all, I've seen loggers leave a worse mess, but the task is still large. Our lot is a little over 6 acres and I'd estimate that the area that was cleared was about two acres. It is certainly a larger clear cut than I would have preferred had I been involved, but it is what it is and we have a blank slate. We'll claim room for the house, the waste water system, a vegetable garden, a small yard and the driveway. Restoring some areas to healthy forest and rehabilitating the buffer along the stream will be longer term projects.

Even if it is the tedium of piling up sticks and the abysmal real estate market is keeping us from selling the house we're in, it feels really good to get to day dreaming....I mean work!

Pray for water...shallow water!

The bids are in on drilling the well. They were all about the same. I'm going to go with the low bid by Parker Water Wells from up in Middletown Springs, VT. They do all the well installations for us a work and come highly regarded by all I talk to. All that's left to do is pray for water! One neighbor has a well that is almost 500' deep and yields nothing and another house down the road has a 150' well that yields 40 gallons per minute...anyone know a douser? Hope for the best!

Excavation work goes to.........Butch!

Five qualified excavation contractors bid on the site and septic system work for our new house. The bids were all over the place; with the highest being almost double the lowest. In the end, I chose Butch Wilson Excavating. Butch was recommended by our engineer, helped me out a bunch in the beginning with some preliminary numbers, showed a willingness to get my job done on my budget, and he's from Chester. I even had my second choice of the contractors that bid on the job tell me that if Butch was bidding on the job I should hire him....that makes the decision a bit easier. The snow is still knee deep up on the land and the road is a muddy mess, so we're keeping optimistic that we can get our house sold and get Butch working in a couple months.