poplar road

Better late than never, I am putting another sleepless night to good use by finally updating my blog. Starting way back in September of '04 when we put in the offer on this place, Richard dreamed up big plans to transform the barn into a shop. Here is the way the previous owners left it for us, with the large cluster of railroad tie and chicken wire pens that housed all of their birds. It was nasty. What a difference now, as we look forward to hosting our party in it!

As of this weekend, we have officially seen the last of the bird manure, hurrah! (And hopefully can say the same for the smell.) It's been hard to pick highlights of all the phases of demolition over the past two years since we began in the spring of '05. Thank you to everyone who's helped us along the way! I know most of you will skip to the end to see what we finished this weekend, but with a before and after like this I can't resist posting as many photos as my connection will allow. Lots of work to do still before our big bash, but we're feeling more confident that we'll get it done. Enjoy!

Bev got us started in Easter of 2005.

In May, one shed left on the east side, on the west a jungle.

Richard's whole family leant a hand in Easter 2006.

And then in June we tackled the interior. Ugh!

Many thanks to A, B, and C. (Now it's A, B, C & D!)

Leaping ahead, Buddy's favourite spot, January 2007.

Chris helped hang new doors, and Dagny 'parked' Mechano…

…right through the last horse stall. Demolition derby?

Dagny found clean sand to play in, while the guys

cleared out barrowloads of chicken crap. Ta-da!

Richard re-built the west wall, recycling much of the wood.

With the thresher gone, Mechano became a plow.

Richard's rock-crawling 4x4 has been very useful as it sits waiting for the shop to be finished so it can get fixed. We've used it to winch down roof beams, break up small hillocks of earth, ram walls, lift piles of tires, and Chris and Richard even fabricated "the ripper" for it to drag like a plow, using the airbags to adjust the height. But that barely scratched the surface of this weedy, rocky property. This month, we put Mechano out to pasture and brought home Bobbercat.

My vantage point is a huge pile of dirt.

The excavator worked best to loosen rocky soil.

Richard's new toy has him smiling ear to ear.

Separating out the largest rocks.

What a difference! So tidy, so flat.

That pile just gets bigger and bigger....

Richard did the first dozen feet or so by himself...

...and together we doubled it. Almost out of rock, though.

Richard got a great deal on this used skidsteer, and thanks to the twins, he also got the neighbour's excavator working, without which we'd be fruitlessly dodging boulders. We expected a lot of rock, this being Stoney Flats after all, but good grief! We had enough rock just from the area he graded over the past week to start a retaining wall this weekend. Without the bobcat Richard couldn't have set the bottom row in place, they're so heavy. I'm excited about setting up a rock garden when we use a similar method in the front yard. The next task is to dig a trench for the new water line and electrical cable between house, well and barn. And order a truckload or three of gravel to put down on top of all the bare dirt. We're so looking forward to showing it off in person to our visitors this month and in August!