Demolition Team Arrives!

Since we bought some acreage last fall, we have been waiting for the day when we could bring in the heavy duty equipment to help build the road we need into the place to gain better access.   Recently we rented a nice heavy duty 4-wheel drive tractor with a large bucket for the day.  It was a man's dream come true - that tractor was able to knock down about 30 trees, and we were able finally to see where our road was going to go, and to better envision where we will be putting a home.

The men with their toy for the day!

Not wasting any time, and getting busy knocking down the lodgepole pines! They don't have much of a root system, and just toppled over with just a tap from the bucket of the tractor - much easier than trying to cut them down one by one!

Taking out the trees that would block sunshine to our garden was first on the list.

This area will be my future garden.  Quite a few trees needed to be taken down in order to provide the garden with lots of sunshine.

There was an old fence with barbed wire in front of the property.  A few minutes working with the barbed wire and old fence posts, and the old fence was no more! The fence needed to go so we could widen the driveway.

Our building permits displayed at the front of the property.

Next, my husband got busy working on the driveway.  It needed to be widened and leveled before the dump trucks arrived with gravel.

It was amazing how much work this tractor got done in minutes - work that would have taken us hours - and days to do by hand!

It was great to watch the driveway take shape in just a few minutes.

Finally, just in time for the dump trucks, the driveway was ready for the gravel to be dumped.

A picture of the driveway now, after the tractor had done its quick work, and the gravel had been spread. So much nicer to drive on now!

Attention was now turned to beginning to work on the road that we want to build that will go to the back of the property.  We found that the trees were more deeply rooted and the ground still wet, and the work slowed down at this point. The tractor got a lot accomplished in a short amount of time, although it seemed like the time we had it rented went by way too fast!!!

Since we had gotten trees out of the way in our garden area, the next step after we had to return the tractor, was to rent a rotatillor to break up the ground for the garden.  The rotatillor was a heavy-duty work horse that turned up the ground for the garden in a hurry.

Lots of rocks, roots, and weeds = lots of work!  Rototilling the ground is one thing, but then all the rocks, weeds, and roots have got to be taken out.

While my husband rototilled, I picked up the obvious rocks, roots and weeds as I could.  It certainly is hard work breaking up a garden for the first time!  Having modern equipment certainly helps to make things easier, but I couldn't help thinking about our ancestors who had no modern equipment to help them, and what a hard job it must have been for them!  We were just working with a small patch of ground to try to get it to reproduce and grow food for us, but our existence does not depend on this at all.  We still have the grocery store down the street.  It is unfathomable for us to understand how hard the life was for our ancestors who had to wrest with the ground, and with the forces of nature to bring forth enough food for survival for themselves and their families.  Doing some work like this is good for the soul, and brings an appreciation for the blessings of the modern conveniences that we enjoy today!