Lot clearing!

So, yesterday (Saturday) was our lot clearing day! It was amazing. I am still left speachless at the outpouring of love and time given to us by our friends, and even by people we hardly know.

So, just as a reminder, this is what our lot looked like from the road before anything happened. This is the best shot I could get of it, it was so packed full of mostly cedar trees.

And when I arrived at 10am Saturday morning (an hour after they started) this is what it looked like (this picture is pretty much from the same spot believe it or not). My jaw just about hit the ground. The other big surprise was that instead of the 20 or so men we expected....there were closer to 40 people. Mostly men, but women and children too. Plus 2 or 3 bobcats, a backhoe, a few trailers, and a chipper.

The bobcats were knocking over the cedar trees and ripping them out of the ground. Then someone would come by and cut the stump off, and then the tree would be dragged to the chipper to be demolished.

The smart people wore masks...I should have worn a mask. The cedar is AWFUL. Even as I type, I can still feel it sitting in my lungs. I found out the hard way (before Christmas) that I'm allergic to cedar (along with most everyone else around here) so going onto our property with cedar trees being turned to mulch...well, you can imagine. It smells great, it does awful things to your respiratory system.

My love. Master overseer and boss. He stayed there all day to help direct people what to cut down and how far back on our property to go.

1 cedar mulch pile down, and on to the next. By the end of the day I believe there were 4 total.

This brings back memories of sitting in dad's lap in his bobcat when I was little.

See his shirt? It says "Someday I'll be your boss" LOL!!!

The chipper went full speed all day long. It did get clogged a few times, but the guys worked quickly to unclog it and off it went again.

The guy on the right in this picture is our builder, Barry. He's also drawn up the plans for the house. One stop shopping for us! It's been so great to work with him. The house is going to be perfect for us I think. Once we have a final plan, I'll see about posting it on here so you all can see. We're very excited about it. Barry thinks we'll be starting to build by mid-February!

At the beginning of lunch break. I stood up on the chipper and took a picture of the trees waiting for their demise :)

lunch!
So as I had written in my previous post, lunch was my responsibility. Also as previously stated, we had planned on about 20 people. Thankfully, in anticipation of about 20 people, Tres and I had gone to the grocery store to get extra food. Mostly sausage. lol. We had asked a lady at the church, whose ministry is to cook food for people who need it, if she would make a brisket for us. So with brisket for sandwiches, and sausage that I grilled before heading over (with Morgan's help (she's the pastor's daughter)) plus chips, cookies, soda, beer, water and probably other things that I'm forgetting--Morgan and I headed to the property to feed the masses. Praying that we had enough food. Which we did thankfully.

The other thing that I haven't mentioned yet is that I hadn't planned to go over to the property until lunch time. I figured I'd get caught up on the process then. But Tres called me at 945 and told me that I'd better get over there earlier to see it before lunch because of how fast they were all moving--and that is when I took the pictures above. So anyway...moving on.

Here is Justin, another smarty with a mask. He though is very allergic to cedar, so he knew to come prepared.

Ira (my future father-in-law), and Greg (our pastor, best man at our wedding, Tres' best friend, and the one who made the lot clearing possible by pulling together all the man power for us)

Looking toward the road (almost) from the side of the property)

The line for the chipper

King of the mountain. Greg, up on a cedar mulch pile

I needed to sit for a bit before cleaning up lunch to head home, and lucky for me I have a built in seat :)

Watching the progress. It was mind blowing to me. I was speechless all day long.

Just some of the cars lined up on our street. There actually were a few more behind me, and more down around that bend, plus more around the corner further down the street.

So at around 2 I had to leave to head home, because I had Mary Kay party to get ready for. So I cleaned up the food, and headed home, so I missed the end of the day progress sadly. But on my way back out to go to my party, I stopped by the property to take an ending picture. This is also from about the same place as the very first picture. I might be off by 10 or so feet...but it's close. Crazy right? This actually looks like a nice place to live now! So lining the right side of our property are a bunch of oak trees, plus another nice few in the middle there. We're hoping those ones in the middle can stay, and be in our front yard, rather than having to tear them down to build the house. At the back of the property are a bunch of oaks, and we left a bunch of cedar too to block our view of the ugly property behind us. lol. It's a long skinny lot that we have, so we should have a nice back yard we hope. Lots of space. On the left (which you can't see in the pic really) there aren't any trees unfortunately. So we may have to plant some down the road.

So now, we just have to get all the appropriate approvals locally, and then take the plans to the bank. They're going to do a septic test (they dug the hole on Saturday too) and then tap in the water and electric (which is done through Briarcliff, the "village" we're building in) and then we can start building! Let the building begin! We're so ready, and so excited.

p.s. this is my 300th post on this blog!