Getting ready to hibernate...

After enjoying unseasonably mild and dry weather right up through Thanksgiving, the winter season has finally arrived. The reprieve from winter gave us time to get all the big things done: Well dug, power brought in, driveway cut in and base rock put down, and power and water lines buried from the base of the hill to the homesite. When spring arrives, we'll be ready to get right down to the task of building the house and the shop.
I have been busy making improvements to our little foreclosure house, too. After hearing tales of how the crawl space is prone to flooding in the spring, I dug a 3-foot deep, 150-foot long french drain between the hillside and the house. I also piped the downspouts from the roof into the drain. After laying a 4" perforated pipe in the bottom of the ditch, I backfilled the ditch with 2 1/2 feet of gravel. That should do the trick. The little house is snug and cozy, and we are enjoying feeding our adopted covey of quail. We are looking forward to the beauty that winter brings.

Finally done...

The electrician ran wires to the pumphouse, the pump guy installed the pump controls and the pressure tank, and I finally finished backfilling all the open trenches. Now all we need is for Idaho Power to come out and connect the meter to the transformer. Once we have power, I'll install a baseboard heater and a light in the pumphouse. Harvey should have the road completely graded and ready for gravel by the end of next week. Aside from a few small chores, that will pretty much wrap up the activity at the ranch for the winter. After we move all our stored stuff out of the warehouse in Boise and into a storage facility closer to Ola, we'll begin concentrating on the details of outfitting the new house.

Winter is on the way...

As Old Man Winter extends his icy fingers over the butte, I am scrambling to get all the dirt work done before the snow flies. I finished running the water and power lines at the forclosure house from the new well to the pumphouse and backfilled the trenches. The water lines are four feet below the surface to protect them from freezing. On the ranch property, I still have several hundred feet of trench to bed with sand, then backfill. Two days of rain have made the fields very slippery, even for my tractor. Six or seven hours on that tractor with the cold, wet wind blowing isn't as much fun as you first might imagine. The electrician will be out on Monday to set the meter and wire up the well.