Saturday, November 17, 2007

Thanksgiving, already.


About a week after the last post I had my excavator return. The first week of school I had Rich B. dredge out our 50 year old pond and he did a magnificent job, picking up where I had left off in the beginning of summer when I rented the D-5 Cat to clear it of decades of brush and undergrowth. He then came up to the top of the mountain (we live on a pretty big hill, actually)and worked on getting us some flat land to build a bank barn on. He gets 125 an hour so it was not cheap, considering the clock starts ticking the minute he leaves his driveway a town away from here. Figure $1250 a day and you are about right...but I'm glad it's done and so are the neighbors and the people who drive by the waterfalls everyday. On Election day at the polling place people were telling me it was nice to see it again. Some of these folks used to swim in the pond as kids.

The catalyst for having the pond cleaned was the fact that the trucking company that delivered my new Powermatic tablesaw the first week of September hooked the truck onto the culvert under the road and destroyed it as the truck got stuck in the ditch near it and had to be pulled out. I had to have Rich replace the 24" culvert pipe with a 30" one he had around, and the trucking company honored their obligation to pay for it.

I have not had the chance to cut one stick of wood with the Powermatic since setting it up. (Brother Drew got my trustworthy hybrid Ryobi saw, delivered to his house 5 miles away on his wedding day.) I think that I will be starting our new cherry kitchen with it soon.

Rich was back in late October and finished the flat spot up top and cleared some more land for me near the furnace pole barn, which Laura and I have decided to covert partially into a temporary stable as I can get both water and electricity to it. I hired Gordon and his son Dale to bring power and lights down there about 200 feet from the existing house. Gordon is pushing 80 years old but he is an icon in this town and also dispensed information about the candidates running for the town board, which was helpful. He feeds the puppies dog biscuits and they go nuts where he comes around.

So, it's time to get ready for the snowflakes to fly. I have been moving my timbers and lumber around with the tractor and forks, worth their weight in gold, to get this place snowplow ready. Firewood processing is also taking up time but that's part of the deal living up here in the winter.