While we were out

We bought some property in the NC mountains about two years ago and it had started to consume all my thoughts, spare time, and money so I kind of got away from the blogging - you know got away for almost a year. We've decided to let someone else build us a cabin instead of trying to tackle it ourselves so now the mountain place will consume all of my anxious thoughts and money, which hopefully will leave me some time to blog about stuff around the place here in Raleigh. When I think back over the past year a fair amount of stuff has gone on around here since I last posted.

Possibly the most exciting thing to have happened is the acquisition of the tractor. We got a used Kubota B7610 from a friend of Dianne's at work. It had belonged to this friend's father who passed away leaving the tractor to Dianne's friend. It came with a front end loader and I also bought a box blade for it.

The question everyone asks is what do you do with it? So far I have used it to dig out a trench along the border of our driveway and side yard in which I put 6x6 timbers to create a well-defined border between the two. I used it to spread 20 tons of driveway gravel (crush & run) . One the material was spread I used the box blade to level it all and smooth it. I used it to spread 10 tons of topsoil to create a smooth transition between the driveway and the side yard. This is necessary to drive vehicles into the side yard for hooking up our various towables - utility trailer, boat, camper. I also used the tractor to create a nice trail through our front woods and am planning a trail through the back woods. I also fixed a drainage problem we were having by digging up a collapsed pipe that drains four box drains in the front yard. After digging out the old collapsed pipe I extended the trench (using the tractor of course) and put in a two new sections of pipe. The tractor is also invaluable for lifting and moving all sorts of heavy stuff. Eventually I plan to take the tractor up to the mountain property to help with maintenance and repairs on about 1/4 mile of gravel road and ditches. I have really been amazed at how much work this thing can accomplish in a short period of time. And I'm no expert tractor user. Everything I've tackled has been totally new to me but I've taken it slow and made sure I was working within my comfort level.

A really good web resource for tractors and tractor related subjects are the forums at TractorByNet . There's a cool sub-page on projects that gets me really inspired.

All for now, but I hope to get back to this more regularly - lots of things to blog about. New woodshed, new chickens, new chicken litter, new paint job on the garden village playhouse, new projects all around the place.