Chapter 2...Breaking Ground On Our New Off Grid Property

Hi everyone, Finally the day we have been waiting for.  The day our grader can start working on our dream. It was a priority to get the grading and the roads done so we could get the concrete and pumper trucks in to start the house. Our property has been virtually untouched by man for almost 50 years. For the past 25 years there have been and still are cattle on the property. Yes these cows are our only neighbors. The man, Howard, who owns the cattle has been using this property for 25 years. Mike and I decided to let Howard keep the cows on our land. After all they do keep the land very clean. Who wants to mow 40 acres anyway? Not me, that's for sure.  We already have enough to mow on our other property where we are living now: So on May 28 our grader started cutting open our roads. The only roads n the property were just your basic path from driving over the grass with huge ruts in some spots. I thought our jeep might get swallowed up. When you live in the mountains you really need a 4 wheel drive truck. That's on the list after we get the house done. Anyway, after 4 hours of grading it started to pour. Of course that was a really bad thing because our nice freshly cut roads turned into mud. Here are a couple of pictures of before and after on the roads. After The next day our grader had to work on our right-of-way because it was too muddy to work inside the property. They cut open the right-of-way and added truck loads of crush and run to firm up the road. On friday the 30th things were dry enough to start working inside again. Then the weekend came and no work got done. The next week was spent with Mike and I cutting and trimming trees, raking rocks, and basically cleaning up the land while the graders did their thing. The graders worked on our roads, digging out our homesite, and making flat land. We had no flat land at the top of the property where our homesite is so we had to "make it". It was just a knoll at the top of the hill. Our grader cut into the knoll and moved the dirt to what now looks like 1/2 football field on flat land where there once was none. On June 3 our grader brought in 2 trackhoes to dig out our homesite. This was really exciting even though to you it will just look like a hole in the ground. On friday June 6 we had to move our shipping container from our current property to the new land. This was no easy task since the container is 8ft x 20 ft and weighs four thousand pounds. It's not easy to find anyone who can move that. We called the local towing company and they couldn't do it. They gave us a number for a man who would move "anything". Sure enough the guy came through and hauled that container to the new property and straight up the hill. We needed to get this container to the property so we could start bring supplies and equipment over.  Here is a picture of the truck with our container: I hope you are enjoying the story so far. Lisa