Chapter 121...Driveway Sealing Down Steep Part and Cool Machine:)

Off Grid...Chapter 121 Finally....I am here because I owe you our last story from 2011. So let me take you back and I will show you what we did. 9-25-11 I have to start off by showing you a picture that I think is pretty cool. We get so many great pictures here. 9-26-11 It is a beautiful morning the next day!!! 9-30-11 Ok...today is a big day for us. Mike and I are going to seal the whole driveway that was paved our first year here. It is about 600 feet plus the curbs. We start off by doing the curbs first. We finally have a system for that. Mike and I work together. One of us pours some of the sealer onto the tops of the curbs in a 5 foot section. Then we both brush the sealer onto the curbs. We worked our way down one side of the driveway and then back up the other. Now it's time for the driveway. We have a total of 12 five gallon buckets of sealer. We are ready to go. We have to line the buckets going down the drive. Once we put the sealer on, we cannot walk back up it for a few days. Today is a much cooler day than when we tried to do the sealing at the top. It is making this job much easier. Mike and I work together the whole way down. He takes the left side and I take the right side. Mike coming around our curve. We are involved now...and no time for any breaks. We just have to keep rolling until we have no more buckets left. Almost done Woo hoo...we have no more sealer for the year. We are done Wow..it looks so clean. Now if we can just keep the cows off, lol. Here ae some pictures of the finished job. The top portion with the new electric fence in place.  The new fence going our gate. I miss this view right now. 10-3-11 We have one small section of the old white electric fence that goes around the rock. Mike wants to replace that with the silver wire so the fence is less noticeable. We have to take out the old white fence first so we can fix it. Here is Mike cutting a piece of rebar down. We can't get it out of the ground. I go down and use the remover to take to old T-posts. We are going to use up the smaller rebar for the new fence. At some point we will fence off the whole driveway and the steepest rock section to keep the cows off Mike is painting the rebar. Of course we have to make everything match We made it down one side and back around the curved rock area with the new wire. Now we have to splice the two wires together. Mike holds the two wires together while I pull for him. Then he puts the splice on. Then he uses the crimper to squeeze it tight. We are done with the first section of driveway. Hopefully the cows will not get through and make a mess of it. That was our last planned job of the year. Now we are on cleaning up mode. The machines have to be emptied, cleaned and then stored. We won't be using the tractor, mower, weed eater, or any other equipment until next year when we get back from FL. 10-7-11 Today we took a ride over to Jimmy's property. He rented a really cool machine and Mike and I want to see if we might be able to use it. It's a spreader used for grass seed and also hay. We followed his guys up to the top of a hill and watched the new machine. Very cool. You load up your hay, the machine chops it up and then it spits it out. It makes seeding a rough hill much easier to do. Check it out. I love seeing things like that. Machinery is so amazing. Mike and I picked up some more rebar. He wants us to get a jump on next year's sealing job. We add the poles 25 feet apart on both sides of the driveway. Then we paint them green. We won't put the wire up until next spring. We want the cows to get used to going around the driveway in small doses. Here is Mike pounding in a pole for next year's fence. And of course, our supervisor Niki is making sure we do our jobs right, lol. Once all of the rebar is on and painted we have to add the clips that will hold the electric wire. That is it. We are done with the work for the year. Now it's just time for us to prep to go to FL to work on some real estate there. 10-12-11 Our last picture for the Fall. I hope you all enjoyed our last story of the year.  Just dreaming and planning some more for 2012.

Chapter 120...Body Work & Painting The Shipping Container...And A Lot More

Off Grid... Chapter 120 Back to the end of August: We picked up 12 more five gallon buckets of sealer for the driveway. We want to finish the sealing for the paving that was done the first year. We are waiting for a good day....one that is not too hot. Each day Mike, Niki and I go to the pond to feed the fish. What is really cool is we have trained a turtle, the one we found on the side of the road, to come up and feed. He is so cool. I tried to take a picture but he didn't come out. Sorry!!! 8/29 Mike has been working really hard on our main building to get it ready for painting. He has repaired some dents, taken care of the rust, and cleaned it up. Kind of like a really big car Mike sanding the building. More sanding. And finally blowing off the building of any debris leftover from the sanding. While he worked on the building I made 12 jars of salsa. I am trying to do anything and everything with all the tomatoes my garden has. 8/30 Today is the day. Time to paint the building. Mike is going to spray it while I hold cardboard up to protect the solar panels. Hopefully we don;t have any wind today Mike getting the sprayer ready. Mike starting to spray. We decided to paint the building the same color as the house. Next Spring we plan to landscape around the building. Almost done with one side. The building is done....and much better than it was and 9/1 We have been watching our driveway and new curbs to see if we will have any washout. We got a little rain about a week ago and we have a slight washout at the end of our drive. Time to fix it Mike and I went to the Farm Supply and picked up a concrete drain box and some pipe. Now for the work. On our way down the driveway we check out the new curbing. Here is a spout from our drive that goes into the ditch where we ran the culvert under the driveway. This one works well  The curbs on the driveway. They came out pretty good. To get the drain box in we have to cut a rectangle out of the pavement. Mike gives me an ax and I go to work, lol. It's a good thing the pavement wasn't too thick at that point We finally get the new drain box in place. Now it's time to dig the ditch for the pipe. Ugh!! This is where it got tough. It was not easy digging. Thankfully it wasn't far. The pipe is in and connected to the drain box. Next we put some seed and hay on the freshly dug area. Another job done...the new drain box is finished. If we could just keep the cows off of it so they don't crush the pipe. We will have to add some rocks to keep them away. 9/3 We have some rain in the forecast so Mike wants to get seed on the hill across the way. It is a very very steep hill This is the plan. We are going to take 2 buckets, one for each of us, and 100 pounds of grass seed and drive through a neighbor's property and throw the seed "down" from the top We get to the top border of our property and I carry the buckets while Mike carries one bag of seed. This is the hill we are trying to seed. Mike goes one way and I go the other way with our buckets of seed. Looking across at Mike. It is very steep and very hard to walk on. I finally made it as far as I could with my bucket of seed and I froze. All I could think of was tumbling down the mountain. I had no idea how I was going to get back to meet Mike in the middle. I'm thinking "oh great Mike is going to have to call 911 to get me off this hill" I got down on all fours and started to crawl backwards with my bucket. I was finally able to get back to the middle. I told Mike "I am done with this hill". He took the last bit of seed we had left and threw it down the hill. We did the best we could. It is not an easy hill. Next spring we will have to work some more on it. After we got back to the Jeep, we drove down and put more seed on the flat area. Whew!!! The bank is already growing in. We know that the rain is coming and we will have to postpone sealing the driveway. When we get back home I help Mike unload the trailer with the sealer buckets. I am so looking forward to that job....not, lol. Instead of hurting ourselves, we have gotten wiser Mike uses the hand truck to take the buckets back to the building. That is all we can do for awhile. Mike and I went to NY so the sealing of the driveway will have to wait until we get back home. Lisa