One Week In

So we’re one week in from purchasing the property and we’ve put in an immense amount of man hours working to clear it. The little kids have been picking up trash…SO much trash! And the boys and I have been working on excavating metal from the ground. It’s painstakingly slow and backbreaking work but we’re finally starting to see some progress. We hauled out the big recycling can, and a big trash can with us over the weekend the the kids filled them both to the brim. Our trash guys are going to be HATING us.

Sooooo, fun fact. Did you know that if you toss a couple of coils of steel cable next to a tree, it’ll just grow it’s roots right over that shit? I didn’t. Now I do. 4 HOURS of labor to ax through, and dig under the tree root, SLOWLY, inch by inch, ratcheting up that coil from the Earth. That was insane.

We also pulled a car axle from the Earth. Who knew that if you throw a bunch of crap in a field and left it for 50 years, the Earth would just claim all that shit for itself???? There are vines and brambles and just SOOOOO much crap just holding this stuff in the ground. Every piece must be fought from the ground with a combination of digging, machete slicing of vines and roots, and just brute strength, and then hauled out. Thank goodness for our wagons! We purchased a dumping wagon that hauls 600 lbs, as well as the heavy duty gorilla wagon which conveniently converts into a flatbed for bulky items and will haul up to 800 lbs. These have been immensely helpful!

Also, I never realized how little scrap metal pays…like 3-4 cents per pound, depending on the going rate that day. Still better than paying to dispose of it though!

Also we acquired our brush cutter and I think Johnny is very happy to have it! This thing plows through just about anything and it’s making progress so much faster!. The slow part is of course that we have to get trash / metal / glass / etc all cleared out so he can mow with the brush cutter but we also need him to mow so that we can GET to the trash. It’s kind of a chicken or the egg situation but we’re making progress….slowly but surely.

Also I have to brag on our super awesome trailer hitch cargo carrier I mentioned in our last post. It has come in amazingly helpful! It has hauled everything we’ve asked of it and has been immensely helpful!

The kids are also doing amazingly well with the amount of labor that’s being asked of them. Their first day out they were scared, timid, overwhelmed of course and there was quite a bit of bad attitudes. I was nervous about whether they were actually up to the task. Now that we’ve found a routine and everyone has their jobs, they’re tackling their assignments with gusto and enthusiasm. They feel good about the progress we’re making and I think they can see it starting to come together.

Johnny did an awesome update video that we’ve posted to our YouTube channel to show our progress if you want to check it out here.