Land clearing project

[Anonymous Poster]

That particular baby rolled in from West to East (left to right in the picture) like a Star Wars space ship gradually moving across the landscape. Bright sun to the East, the absolutely defined black edge of the cloud, and, a little further to the West, you could see the wall of water as the rain advanced. You can perfectly predict when you will start to get wet. Sometimes (but not with this one) you can also see the trailing edge with bright sun again -- they often last only 30 minutes or so.

I'm not certain I have your enthusiasm to call them "fun" (they usually disrupt something I have planned), but they are simply Awesome.

 

[OkeeDon]

I mentioned above that there was so much dirt (sand, actually) in my burn piles I decided that wasn't the way to go. I'm not alone. This is a shot of one of my neighbor's burn piles (they clear cut their 2.5 acres) after they tried twice to make it burn up.

 

[OkeeDon]

This will be the beginning of my driveway.

 

[OkeeDon]

The future driveway makes a left/right jog, here. I've thought about splitting it around the cabbage palm and putting some landcaping in the center, but since the entire driveway area will have to be raised with fill from the pond, I may not have enough dirt. We'll see.

 

[OkeeDon]

The driveway then heads down past the bare place to where the house will be.

 

[OkeeDon]

The house will be in front of the oak hammock; you can just see a couple of stakes that are part of the outline. We picked the spot because the oaks will make a nice frame around the house; because they are to the West of the house, they'll also provide some nice shade against the late afternoon sun. The driveway continues past the house to the left; it will go through the passage just barely visible to the left of the oak hammock. The barn will be on the other side of the oaks. My daughter's property is beyond that and the driveway will continue to their property to give them an alternate entrance; their gate is on the heavily traveled state highway to the right in this picture. That's the primary reason we went with a 500' driveway, so we could enter and exit on the side road.

 

[OkeeDon]

Looking back to the East from where the house will be, the bare rounded area is roughly where the pond will be. It will hve a more "interesting" shape than the circle I made with the box blade just to get a visual reference. It will be 1/4 to 1/3 acre.

 

[OkeeDon]

Quite a difference from a few months ago, when this was the best view we had of the oak hammock behind the house area.

 

[Slamfire]

Only complaint I have is the fuel storage tank in photo #40, while ideal for the TC 18, didn't look like it would feed that Cat very often. /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

 

[OkeeDon]

The Cat was a rental, came with it's own fuel system - one of the sexy and expensive diamond plate tanks that fit in the bed of a full size pick-em-up, 4wd dually preferred /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif , with an electric pump and all. Made me intensely jealous. But, when that tank ran dry, we used my gravity "rig" a few times. By the way, that stack of blocks was only temporary - within a few days we had a wood "deck" mounted on 5' 4x4's. When the fuel deck gets to it's final position, it's getting a roof over it.