So much time, so little action

 Fall is a busy time for contractors. So many things to finish before the snow flies, which means NO one is in a hurry to get back to inquiring potential clients. 

We met with several builders in late August, and narrowed it down to two to get bids from. We are still waiting. Between fall busyness and Covid, things go slowly. We have been assured by both that things are progressing on their end. 

We had intended to choose a builder, then let them take care of the driveway, septic, lot prep, etc. but the impending winter has urged us to take some steps on our own, contacting potential contractors, both recommended and found online. Only a few got back to us. In the last couple weeks we have met with contractors for tree removal, driveway, and septic, and now have all on deck to get moving. We've learned a lot. Among the things that have been added to our knowledge base: 

Putting in a driveway apparently requires two different contractors. One for excavation to shape the bed, and one for gravel delivery. I assume that contractors that do both probably exist, but I didn't find one. (Update: Yes, they do, and we got one. Their websites just aren't very informative.)

When you raise a driveway significantly, you also have to widen it much more than we anticipated. This will result in the loss of trees we really wanted to keep. 

Septic systems have lots of space requirements, and can make or break the rest of your plan. (Thankfully, our plan IS do-able. Barely.) Looks like the detached workshop will end up with its own holding tank instead of being connected to the septic system. 

Buckthorn is invasive. We "knew" this before, but now we KNOW this. This time of year, everything else has changed color but buckthorn is still green, making it very obvious just how much we have. Fighting it is going to be a looooooong-term job. It surrounds the outside of the woods, driving out native border species, and the baby trees are thick in the interior. Thankfully the baby ones are only 2-3ft tall and easily pulled by hand. A big improvement can be quickly made. 

Trees can be very sensitive to what goes on within their "drip line". When you have (possibly) 200yo trees near your building site, it complicates things. Two of our huge trees (we have at least 5- three oak, one maple, one we haven't gotten close to yet) are close enough to affect our driveway and our septic. Thankfully the contractors we have talked to are just as adamant as we are that such trees deserve protection.

Elm is nearly impossible to split into firewood. We have a lot of dead elm on the place. Thank you Dutch Elm disease. On the plus side- dead elm is the host for morel mushrooms.