Well this isn't all from today, but today is when I am posting...
These pics are right after the stalls were ripped down. That wall that is laying there made a heck of a bon fire, I cut it into three pieces and lit it up and the fire was about 15 feet high and about 8 feet around. It was plywood on one side and inch thick oak planks on the other (for the stalls) and I had to use a BobCat to move the individual pieces I cut up. I had to use the 18000lbs winch on my truck to pull that wall down. That winch has seen more duty ripping out the horse stalls than at any other time in the last two years as I could never get the truck stuck. :) At this point the place still really smelled like horses.
Seems like I am moving slow but in reality things are going fast relatively, I haven't been able to work on it much due to helping another friend move (including building Ikea furniture) but really started digging in this last weekend. Its a lot of work but I do enjoy stuff like this when I know there is a solid goal.
That pinkish box is where the pump to get water from the pond is located. It was the home of a many mice. Mice have been relocated to the back yard. I have no problem with mice living in the yard, but the house and barn are off limits.
These are from when the crushed concrete fill was put in to level the floor, floor still needs to be compacted and rat walls dug... I am expecting to lose another 5-10 lbs digging those rat walls... all 150 feet or so of them, 2 feet by 10 inches I believe. I have to go check the building code again. That is the bobcat my brother and I used to dig out the old sawdust, etc and bring in the fill. Oh and my Cub Cadet 50" mower. The pole barn is ~47x30. At this point, the place smells pretty clean, most horse smell is gone and today I ripped open two Cinnamon Apple plugin refills and sprinkled it around and that removed most of the remainder. Once I have the pond pump up and running again (note hole for pipe on left in first pic, about 15 feet or so in front of bobcat) I will hose down the walls, I expect to have that running again tomorrow hopefully. Today I finished digging out the hole so I could move the pipe a little and plumbed it up to the first 2x4 cross beam as I will put the pump there on a shelf.
Off in the distance you can see the log house of Bob and Linda, it is gorgeous. Well I haven't seen the inside but the outside is gorgeous.
Sunset while mowing... The darker pics, ironically are earlier, the camera was reacting to the sun.
The house looks so small from the outside, but when you walk in it is much larger. That confuses me a little. Still trying to figure out how to lay the garage out... Could have it so the doors face the road, could have it so the doors face the pole barn, could have it so the door are sideways facing the north... Downside to facing the north is that the wind blows pretty steadily from that direction which has me concerned about snow drifts up side the garage doors. Downside for it facing the road is that the road is a fairly main road and has lots of drive by and stare into your garage potential which doesn't appeal to my privacy thoughts. So it is likely going to be facing the pole barn unless one of my friends comes up with a good reason not to.
I love the white horse fence by the pole barn. Initial thoughts were to rip it all down as I didn't have horses. But a lot of my initial thoughts have been changing as I wait to see how I feel about it when looking at it a lot and also just watching for coincidences (I'm not explaining that, some people will understand, most won't). Things I absolutely can't live with or that I really dislike are changing though, it is the things that I could go either way on that I am not touching for the moment. I am actually thinking putting up some more fence like that along the front and down the sides of the property might be interesting... but then that is make-work for later. :)
View from the street. It is a great street to take a walk or I imagine (as I don't have a bike at the moment) a bike ride down.
I love the depth of the front yard, the next door neighbor there Tabatha has three kids, two of which are young little girls about 3 and 5 and she lets them play all alone all over the place. I keep an eye out on them when I am outside but the yard is so deep, they never wander out to within even 100 feet of the street so they are very safe. I really like how kid friendly the area is overall. I loved growing up in a more more rural environment myself though perhaps my childhood was in too rural an area as you had one grocery store nearby and a blinking yellow light (northern lower Michigan, town called Manton)
I think subdivisions are pushing kids to stay inside and play video games too much. Kids need to play outside and climb trees and find insects and see birds, etc. So all of that is here with every fast food place, Home Depot, Target, Walgreen's, Meijer's, you name it within 5-6 miles and many other stores strip malls in a couple of different directions.
There is a concrete/asphalt road just past that farmhouse so I only have about 600 feet tops of dirt road to drive on if I don't feel like driving on dirt. That is nice for the mustang and for any of my friends who may have hot rod cars with fancy 20" wheels and don't like driving on dirt roads but still want to visit or drop by.
Some pumpkins that were growing in my backyard that I stuck on the fence posts in front of the pond.
The truck waiting for the next thing to tear down or tow around. Great truck, I have had, hmm I don't know, like four different new Dodge 1500's and this 2500 just runs circles around them for how tough it is. Next version will have to be diesel so I can make bio-diesel and burn it. I am figuring if I can get good bio-diesel production in place, then have a diesel truck, a diesel front loader, and a diesel electric generator (for the times you need one) then I will be doing pretty well since that stuff allegedly only costs about $.70 a gallon to make versus the $3.00 a gallon to buy.
