daveSanborn
Active Member
The spring and summer months are my busiest time of year. There always seems to be something around the property that I'm behind on. Every evening is usually devoted to catching up on the list of things needing to be done and a weekend that doesn't involve going out of town, visiting friends/family, going to the beach or some other event that prevents me from getting anything done around here is a rarity.
I'm here to report that I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. Aside from approx. 6 oil changes and car washes, I'm almost caught up!
This year was worse than most as we purchased in March a vacant overgrown lot alongside of us. Here's a "before" picture to show you what I was up against. Try and focus on all that "green shit" in the background for a second.
By hand, I cleared almost the entire 1/2 acre of the nastiest growth of jungle-like vines, briars, small trees, rotting logs, and large trees. Eight LARGE trees (over 100") were dropped, all of them landing exactly where I wanted them to. Each tree trunk was cut into managable (liftable by hand) pieces and stacked. There's been a fire burning somewhere on this property from March up until a couple weeks ago. It was only after all the growth was cut smooth to the ground and burned did I break down and rent a mini-excavator to level off the land and pop all of the smaller stumps. I relocated my carport at a 45 degree angle and created a new driveway onto this new area. Now I have a "U" shaped driveway that will allow me to easily store/park the 23' boat I've been eyeballing. The driveway is pulverized concrete that is already hardening up nicely. I still need to bring in another 20 tons of it to build it up more, but it'll do for now. My arms are tired of shoveling/raking it. At the top of the new driveway I had to install a 30' length of 24" culvert pipe. Notice the incline of the driveway up to the road..... back-filling over the culvert pipe to create a navigible slope required 80 tons of busted up rock/bricks/concrete (free from the local dump), all of which had to be unloaded by hand. There were mornings waking up when I thought permanent damage had been done to my arms from moving all of these rocks around. I managed to somehow along the way drop 20 pounds of winter fat, mostly I assume through sweat in these last couple of humid months. All of the cuts on my hands/arms have healed and with the exception of the still healing "cigarette lighter" sized scab on my right calf where I momentarily caught fire, I survived in one piece.
I've finally gotten to the point where I can wait for the grass to grow and get back to "regular" chores around here.
As viewed from back behind the garage/shop..... (the old property line was just a couple feet to the left of the grass line running alongside of the garage.... coincidentally, in this photo I'm standing about 30' in front of the pointed end of the pie shaped 1/2 acre parcel, the old property line extended in a straight line about even with the visible corner of the carport and now extends WAY over to the left as I still wanted to leave a natural barrier between me and my neighbor)
The newly angled carport and driveway when viewed from in front of the garage/shop..... (notice the new fire pit conveniently placed out in front of the shop to sit around and drink beer by this fall/winter.... also notice the stack of firewood that is three rows deep, 6' high and 40' long (minus one dead copperhead from last saturday.... I should have enough fire wood for years.....)
All of the freakin' rock fill it took to create an acceptable slope....
Viewed from the top of the new driveway.....
The angled carport that will allow me to either drive under or around....
I'm here to report that I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. Aside from approx. 6 oil changes and car washes, I'm almost caught up!
This year was worse than most as we purchased in March a vacant overgrown lot alongside of us. Here's a "before" picture to show you what I was up against. Try and focus on all that "green shit" in the background for a second.
By hand, I cleared almost the entire 1/2 acre of the nastiest growth of jungle-like vines, briars, small trees, rotting logs, and large trees. Eight LARGE trees (over 100") were dropped, all of them landing exactly where I wanted them to. Each tree trunk was cut into managable (liftable by hand) pieces and stacked. There's been a fire burning somewhere on this property from March up until a couple weeks ago. It was only after all the growth was cut smooth to the ground and burned did I break down and rent a mini-excavator to level off the land and pop all of the smaller stumps. I relocated my carport at a 45 degree angle and created a new driveway onto this new area. Now I have a "U" shaped driveway that will allow me to easily store/park the 23' boat I've been eyeballing. The driveway is pulverized concrete that is already hardening up nicely. I still need to bring in another 20 tons of it to build it up more, but it'll do for now. My arms are tired of shoveling/raking it. At the top of the new driveway I had to install a 30' length of 24" culvert pipe. Notice the incline of the driveway up to the road..... back-filling over the culvert pipe to create a navigible slope required 80 tons of busted up rock/bricks/concrete (free from the local dump), all of which had to be unloaded by hand. There were mornings waking up when I thought permanent damage had been done to my arms from moving all of these rocks around. I managed to somehow along the way drop 20 pounds of winter fat, mostly I assume through sweat in these last couple of humid months. All of the cuts on my hands/arms have healed and with the exception of the still healing "cigarette lighter" sized scab on my right calf where I momentarily caught fire, I survived in one piece.
I've finally gotten to the point where I can wait for the grass to grow and get back to "regular" chores around here.
As viewed from back behind the garage/shop..... (the old property line was just a couple feet to the left of the grass line running alongside of the garage.... coincidentally, in this photo I'm standing about 30' in front of the pointed end of the pie shaped 1/2 acre parcel, the old property line extended in a straight line about even with the visible corner of the carport and now extends WAY over to the left as I still wanted to leave a natural barrier between me and my neighbor)
The newly angled carport and driveway when viewed from in front of the garage/shop..... (notice the new fire pit conveniently placed out in front of the shop to sit around and drink beer by this fall/winter.... also notice the stack of firewood that is three rows deep, 6' high and 40' long (minus one dead copperhead from last saturday.... I should have enough fire wood for years.....)
All of the freakin' rock fill it took to create an acceptable slope....
Viewed from the top of the new driveway.....
The angled carport that will allow me to either drive under or around....
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