Barn Progress 11-28-08

The barn begins!

November 4, 2008. The Barn gets started! Finally, construction begins, we are pretty excited but wish we could be on site more.

Further pictures as we progress coming soon!

Be sure to click on the pictures to see them larger!

Cute photo

Just had to share this - our cat BeeBo on our deck. Check out the flowers going crazy in the box, the only fertilizer we used was pure pollack fish bone meal

Even more progress!

I went up to the property to meet our contractor to stake out the aproximate locations of the barn and the house and the ADU. Since it was a nice day, I drove up to the top of Mt Walker to see if our land was visible. Since Mt walker is clearly visible from our property, I thought this would be easy. Too bad I don't have a camera with a telephoto lens! Be sure to click on these pictures, they blow up really big!This first picture, I think I missed it, looks like Pope timber land or National forest up against the foothills. But I also think lot 13 is close to the center of this firt pic. After much debate, we "think" we've identified it in this picture, as well as one of our neighbors' lot, 13 that was cleared last winter.

Daniel S, did I get it right? Even if this is not it, the view of the general area was spectacular!

We had our contractor save as much wood as he could for future firewood. I think we have a bit of work "cut" out for us here....

Dan made tremendous progress on the grading! We're just amazed at how smooth he got it.

This picture is looking North, the house site is near the top of that hill. We're thinking the chicken coop should go to the North of that lone hemlock tree. To the right, where the hill angles down will be our orchard.

We want the chicken coop close enough to that so the birds can be put in there to clean up any fruit that falls.

These 2 pictures below have labels on them marking approximate locates of buildings. You can only read them though if you click and make the picture bigger.

We're still working on getting the right grade for the barn, ensuring we have enough slope away from both sides where the horses, sheep & goats will be. We should be able to start barn construction this fall!

July 12- the view gets better!

Our contractor finished the major part of the clearing of trees today! For the first time, we could easily see Mt Rainier from standing where the house will be!

As we were going home, I took some pictures from the truck while on the Hood Canal Bridge. Mt Walker and Green Mtn are the ones most prominant from our building site.

For bigger pictures, click on them, or go to my

slideshow at Flickr

Our Cabin

When we first bought our forest land, we tried camping in our trailer. The trouble with that was - we would frequently have to haul the trailer down to town to fill up on water, and empty grey and black water tanks. It was a tiny trailer, no room for much and more than 2 people really cramped the space. The best thing it had going for it - it could be moved. So we sold it and had this tiny, 12 x 16' 2 story cabin built. It has all the comforts of home, but smaller! Propane supplies our refrigerator, range and on demand hot water heater. An 1100 gallon tank stores rainwater that is collected off the roof. This allows us showers and water for washing. The tank has an ozone generator attached, and a sediment filter, but we still use a ceramic filter similar to this for drinking water:

Our cabin accommodates a queen size bed in the upstairs loft, and a full size futon on the main floor. There is also a wood stove that keeps us toasty in the winter!

The pump for water and the lights are operated by a generator, for now. I would love to get a solar set up, at least for lights and small appliances and only run the generator (hate that noisy thing, just spoils the ambiance!) for water. Maybe sometime in the future.

Our eldest dog, Busy!

This is Busy, aka WTCH Burnt Mtn's Howlin Success RTDs

She's 13 1/2 years old now, but still has the energy to hike throught the woods and visit our building site. The rest of our dogs really enjoy the walk on the trail from the cabin to the clearing as well!

Busy also likes to talk turkey with Tikey our pet Bourbon Red tom!