Well, Well...

Yesterday the well driller arrived with his rig. His wife is pictured "witching" for water. She does this by holding two steel rods which have been bent at a right angle. She walks with the rods pointing out straight in front of her, and when she is above a likely spot for water, the rods mysteriously swing out to the sides. As unlikely as this may sound, it is a common practice in rural areas. Very few people are able to do this, and are in great demand. Jim, the driller, was down to 125 feet when we left him this afternoon. Other wells in the area average 300 to 700 feet. Think shallow!

Movin' on up...

Sometimes things happen that really make you wonder. Here we are, living in a motel apartment in Boise, knowing that we weren't going to get the house built before the winter, and wondering just what we were going to do. Then out of the blue, this manufactured doublewide right at the end of Timber Flat Road showed up in a forclosure auction. We had heard that there were other folks in Ola interested in the property, so went to the auction ready to rumble. To our surprise, we were the only bidders, and picked it up for a fraction of it's real worth. Now we have a base of operations that is 1.4 miles from our property, and we can finally get out of Boise. We are hoping to have the deed recorded, the utilities turned on, and the carpet replaced by next week, so we can move in. It's really nice to hit a home run once in a while.

Oops...

This dump truck was backing up the driveway in order to dump its load of base rock when the driver got a bit too close to the shoulder. Loaded, this truck tops 80,000 lb. Although it may not look it, the truck is very close to tipping over. I hooked some chains to the front tow hooks and attempted to help the driver pull out of the ditch with my tractor. As you can see in the foreground, all I managed to do was dig four divots in the road with my spinning tires. Harvey arrived with his giant loader and managed to extricate the truck from the ditch without mishap.

Let's Rock...

Harvey has begun to dump crushed rock for the base layer of the driveway. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you'll see that there are thirty-two loads of rock, and he hasn't even gotten off the hill yet. He estimates that we will need about two hundred more loads of base rock to reach Timber Flat Road. Without that much rock, the driveway would turn into a quagmire when the wet weather comes. After he grades it, he'll come back in with road mix - smaller gravel mixed with sand - to finish the driveway. The good news is that he is getting the rock from a quarry that is less than two miles away. Note that we moved the trailer to the top of the hill to avoid the dust that the rock trucks generate.

The driveway is taking shape...

In this picture, Harvey is widening Timber Flat Road to make a turnaround for the county trucks. Our gate is at the end of the part of the road that the county will maintain year round. Kent and Alvin, the men who will be maintaining it, mentioned that they were having difficulty turning their trucks around, so I had Harvey cut out a nice big turnaround for them. Now they will be able to manuver their snowplows and sand trucks this winter. Within a week, they had graded and gravelled the road all the way to our gate. Susan always has a box of cookies ready for them when we see them working on the road. Never underestimate the power of a cookie.
Harvey has the driveway completely cut and graded, and will begin laying the base rock this weekend.

Welcome to Jellystone Park...

We found these bear tracks on our newly graded driveway about 50 feet from our little trailer. My footprint to the right will give them some scale. We had been told by the local residents that there were bears in the area, but this is the first positive sign that we have seen. The list of critters keeps on growing. So far we have seen - or seen positive signs of - deer, elk, bear, coyote, turkey, quail, chukkar, partridge, dove, rockchucks, and a variety of snakes and lizards. We have been told that we have mountain lions as well, but they are elusive and rarely seen.

Another productive day...

Today Susan and I hiked around the western perimeter of the ranch, painting fenceposts orange to signify no hunting. This afternoon, Harvey Church and I laid out the route for the driveway, just over 7/10 of a mile long. Harvey then went to work with his old Caterpillar D7, and made it look easy. That machine can really move some dirt! He'll be back tomorrow to do some more, and hopes to be finished cutting in the driveway on Monday. He'll then begin to level the homesite in preparation for pouring the footings and slab.