Culvert and Clearing

Our first week.

We arrived in Florida on a Sunday night and checked into our favorite rv park for a month.  We will use this as our home base until we can move over to the new property.

Monday morning we closed on the new property.  On our way to the property we picked up a gate for the front and dropped that off.  Then it was off to M&J's to have our tractor towed to our new place.  We also brought over our other trailer with the small lawnmower.  As soon as we got there Mike and I started mowing.  Mike on the tractor with the bush hog and me on the small lawnmower.  We had a lot of clean up to do since the property was really overgrown.  The back area had small 6-8 foot trees on it that made it impossible to walk through when we first saw this place.  Mike is able to knock them down with the tractor and bush hog.  I'm kind of jealous because I know he is having loads of fun just plowing through the trees, lol.  I'm just getting covered with dusty debris from sitting so low on the lawnmower.  Really now that we have flat land Mike really needs to teach me to drive the tractor.

We spent about a week cutting and clearing.  Sadly I lost all of the pictures from that time because my camera was lost.  I still haven't found it.

Tuesday October 17-

We are going to do as much of the work ourselves as we can.  Mike using the tractor to dig out the area where we need a culvert:

We were a little busy wrestling the two 10ft culverts and the collar in the mud to take pictures.  Mike and I got enough of a hole dug, him with the tractor and me with the shovel,  for us to drop the culvert in place.  Then we added the collar and put the second culvert on the other side of the collar.  We had to do some wrestling to get the two culverts locked together.  But we did it.

Mike digging:

Digging the sides a little deeper for the water to flow out:

Covering the culvert.  Now we can have a gravel delivery:

We got quite a pile of trees and debris from our clean up round.  We called for a burn permit and started our first clean up fire:

Mike pushing the outer edges in with the tractor bucket:

We called for a couple of truckloads of gravel.  Gravel is a lot different here in Florida than in the mountains.  Since we don't have a choice we had a truck load of Millings delivered which is crushed up recycled pavement.

10-18

First truck load coming in:

Mike using that tractor again:

Cleaning up by our entrance.  Getting ready for big trucks to come in:

Our new gate:

10-19
We had a rainy day so it was a good day to get our permits.  The ladies at the county were fantastic.  They helped us draw up the plans and apply for our septic permit.  They also helped with the 911 address information.  Even though it was raining we got a lot done.

10-20
We had another truck load of millings delivered and Mike spent his time smoothing it out.

10-21
Yesterday was my birthday but with Mike and I it's always work before play so we went out to dinner today to celebrate with M&J:)  M is very thoughtful and gave me a pair if work gloves and cream for my hands.  We have a lot of vines and poison ivy/oak here so the gloves will really help(and have:)).



Of course there were many other things going on this week that didn't require pictures and since I lost my camera I lost all of the pictures of us clearing the back 2/3 of the property.  Each day we spent more time mowing, cutting and clearing. I also made multiple calls to contractors to get estimates...we will see who calls back, lol. We did hire our well and septic man.


Next up...ordering trusses and getting a concrete crew.