There's been a lot of work going on at our farm. Days after I wrote the first blog post about the new building, I started digging out all the beautiful flowers that I wanted to keep. You couldn't even tell they were there anymore because the "volunteer" plants had gotten so over grown and out of control. I dug up lilies of different varieties and a rose. They all found new homes somewhere on the farm. I'm hoping they like their new locations. I trimmed as much of the small trees and bushes by hand so my husband wouldn't have so much work to do, while my daughter helped me load up all the branches and haul them away.
Then last Thursday night, my husband said to me, "I better get that project done." I wasn't quite sure which project he was referring to, as he's always busy with a project. Lucky for me he was referring to clearing out the brush! He had gotten a call that the gravel was being delivered the next morning. That was at 6:30 pm. He started sawing down the big bushes, and 3 hours later, he was still on the tractor with lights on clearing out the area. He's a do-er! I'm a planner. We balance each other out.
In the days to follow, more clearing was done and gravel was added. We found this massive boulder in the ground - it may not look too impressive here, but it's big! We found lots of glass and strangely burnt looking pieces of wood. It's amazing what you can find when you dig in the dirt. I weeded more around the stone foundation to really get things cleaned up.
Next Steps
The next steps are to get things level and repair some of the stone foundation, as some of these fell when we were removing the brush. What's neat about this location on our property, is that there used to be a barn here on the original homestead. I'm assuming it was the grainary. The barn was taken down when the previous owners bought the farm in the 1990's. It was probably due the stability of the building, as our house was built in the 1800s - not sure how old the barn was. You can see a picture of it below - this was taken in 1994 - the horse and buggy belonged to the Amish family that rented the property. The foundation of the barn was stone; just like other buildings on our property. I'm trying to preserve that as much as possible.
I'm waiting to hear back to see when the estimated delivery date will be. The excitement is growing now that I can see some progress! Stay tuned for more updates!