All fired up...

We interrupt this blog for an important message - The world is on fire!!

A week ago Thursday a lightning storm came over the butte from the west. As soon as I heard the thunder, I began putting on my wildland fire suit. Before I could finish lacing up my boots, Susan spotted a fire high up on the butte about 1 1/2 miles away.. She took a picture of it from our driveway when it was less than 15 minutes old. You can see by the size of it that it was spreading very quickly. Ola is a very small community. We have five fire vehicles, all at least 25 years old. Every able-bodied man is a member of the volunteer fire department, and everybody turned out to fight this blaze. We fought it night and day for three days before the forest service took over. The photos above show some of the fire, but can in no way adequately communicate the scope of it

After seven days, the Cherry fire, as it was named was finally contained, but not before it had consumed 58,555 acres. To better give you an idea if the population density in this part of Idaho, not one structure of any kind was lost.

The fire is now out, and things in the valley are slowly returning to normal. We are fortunate that our land was spared. Susan and I went back to work rebuilding the barbed wire fence that separates us from the Boise National Forest. The concrete work for the shop and house has been delayed by the fire. Hopefully we'll be pouring concrete next week.

Life's a ditch...

One step forward, two steps back. Today was one of those days. After we spent several days prepping the pad for the shop, it was determined that due to soil instability around the edges, it would be better to do a two stage pour instead of a monolithic pour. This requires a ditch for footings all the way around the pad. That adds up to a little more than 200 feet of ditch, and a lot of wasted time and effort. Something tells me that this won't be the last setback we'll see on this project.

Let's roll...

After several days of filling, leveling, and rolling, the shop pad is nearing completion. We are planning to do a monolithic pour, which means that the floor and the supporting foundation, or stem walls as they are called, will be poured in a single pour rather that pouring the foundation first and then the floor in two separate pours. The critical part of a monolithic pour is getting good compaction of the pad around the edges. This is questionable with this pad due to the large amount of fill needed to level the pad. Susan is enjoying learning to operate the various equipment used in the construction process. Here she is using a large roller, and a smaller compactor called a jumping jack, or ground pounder. Another 6:30AM start to avoid the 100+ degree midday heat. We made it to 1:30pm today. We will often return in the evening for a couple of hours and work until dark. Needless to say, we're ready for an early bedtime after our day's work.