June 6, 2017, Tractor Day #6

Thanks to Kabota of Hillsboro we got our rental tractor Friday afternoon, along with a box scraper, and a brush hog mower. We took turns driving the thing around, being careful to keep a hand on the elevation lever of the brush cutter as we went since everything was covered in trash when we got it two years ago. There was also a tone of cut tree parts littering the ground where we cut trees. The brush hog caught stuff up as we mowed the weeds, making an awful sound and sometimes even stalling the tractor. Eventually we got all of the weeds around the place leveled out. Where we couldn't go with the tractor we used a weed whacker. 

We even got a few things organized. Logs from the trees we had cut got stacked in one place, the burn piles got consolidated, and  the massive compost heap we had been building for more than a year was turned over to cook down some more.

Toward the end of the eight hour rental there were few things left to do, so we cleaned up along the sides of the shipping container where the bulk of the unconsolidated trash was left buried in the weeds since Tractor Day #5. When we finished Day #5 we left a large pile of scrap metal which got hauled off which stopped us from cleaning up the area. I pushed all of the loose stuff into the big trash pile. (We'll handle the last big trash pile once we are living on the farm and cash is more readily available.)

This is a big picture if you click on it.

Our plan is to make the first tentative move to the Farm at some point near the end of this month. Of course this is tentative, since we haven't got the first trailer built yet. Siting our tiny home project is temporary, but will allow us to move the dogs to the Farm and remodel our house for a quick sale. The tiny home comes in two halves and we will live in this little thing until the farm house is built. Click here to find out about the tiny home project.

The first half of the project will sit on the black plastic in the picture above, near the power pole. We put an electrical meter on the pole and PGE hooked us up just two days ago. The second half of the tiny home project will sit to the left of the first and the dog run will be at the back. Eventually I will put up a hoop house to the left of the left side of the combined tiny home and use it for a place to build and store things.

Following the sale of our house in North Plains we will begin building the permanent farm house.

The farm house building will sit behind the shipping container and just to the left the group of trees to the left of the shipping container it when looking a the above picture. The container itself will eventually move to under an awning on the barn (which the person taking this picture would be standing directly in front of). 

Tractor Day #6 was a nearly complete success. We mowed down the seven foot high weeds, cleared the ground where we will put the trailers, and even got a nice gravel bed down for a driveway.

Our new Gravel driveway took  fifteen tons of gravel and a box scraper.
The driveway constitutes the first real improvement we have made to the property.
This is the first actual construction of an improvement.

The Creekside Farm project has finally begun to make some real headway. 

Click here to find our plan defined in broad strokes.

It is hard to believe that this entire thing was covered in seven feet of weeds and berries.
But when we started it was much, much, worse.