Trees

 The overall process of building a house is still pretty much a mystery to us. We are trying to piece together the various steps that need to be done before the actual building begins, and have yet to see a list of which jobs should be done in which order. I've asked a couple of the people we will be working with via email and those questions have not been answered. Very frustrating. 

Before winter hit, we had hoped to get the building site cleared and leveled, the driveway in, and the septic done, so the house could get started quickly this spring. That didn't happen, mostly due to the fact that contractors are so busy that we went weeks without getting responses to our inquiries. In the end, the only job that was completed was getting the trees cleared. 

There was a large grove of trees right where the house will sit, trees around the edge of the site that were too close, and trees where the septic tanks will go, along with lots of deadwood and buckthorn. Much of the buckthorn was in places where would have liked to keep trees, but it made more sense to let the tree guys take it the easy way rather than to deal with it ouselves later. I spent 2 days on-site while they were all removed. It was pretty cool to watch all the big equipment. I went into the day wondering if I was going to be more upset by seeing all the trees getting removed, or excited about the beginning of our dream. Excited won. 

The tree-cutter was really cool! And the driver was very skilled. It had a big claw to grab a tree with a large saw blade to cut it off below the grab. Then the driver could manipulate the very well-jointed arm to lay the log down without ever bumping a neighboring tree. 

We chatted with the driver on his lunch break. Turned out he was from the same small town where I lived with my dad for a year after high school. He was within a year of my age, and every name I could remember from those days, he knew! 

The second day was the clean-up. The biggest logs were stacked to one side for future use however we want, and the smaller logs and branches were all shredded and piled at the back corner of the property for use in landscaping and the garden. This is the shredder. It ate whole trees in seconds. 

All the remaining stumps were ground down by this grinder. The big wheel spun while the driver swung the blade back and forth. Basically obliterates everything at and just below ground level.  

We now have an empty building site. We have the excavator on deck to do the dirt work as soon as the ground is workable and spring weight restrictions for the dirt roads are lifted. "Dirt work" includes installing the septic, leveling the house site, and building up the driveway using dirt from a hill on our little section of tilled ag field. The rough driveway that was already in place goes down to the bottom of the valley and back up the hill to the site. As is, it's undriveable when wet due to the mud and the incline. The lowest part will be raised several feet, and the house site will be lowered a bit to level it off, so in the end the driveway will be much more drivable.