Well, after weeks of searching, we finally have a backhoe. It’s true … you can find anything on eBay. Although I placed my bid based on the photos and description the seller provided, I eventually wound up going up to Monroe on Tuesday, April 25th to inspect it. I figured it would be better for everyone involved if I went there and made sure it was what we were expecting before we paid to ship it here. Aside from the minor problems already disclosed by the seller, it checked out, and an hour later, it was on a truck and on the way here. I met the truck up at the land on Wednesday evening, and we unloaded it …
I put it right to work that evening, moving the telephone poles that Ohio Edison gave us to the top of the hill where they are out of the way. They were killing the grass along the driveway where Ohio Edison left them, and they were so heavy, I couldn’t even budge them with the tractor. The backhoe moved them easily. I didn’t have much time in the following days to play around with our new toy, but I did manage to find some time over the weekend to dig out some stumps along the path of the new driveway. The following weekend, we decided to take advantage of the beautiful, bug free weather, and have a gathering and bonfire. I used the backhoe to gather up all the stumps and other debris, and piled it on the burn pile we already had down by the pond. Sue called Tidy Tims and got us a porta potty, and the party was on …
Last weekend though, I finally got down to business. We went up to the land on Saturday, cleaned up the mess from the party, and then planted a Redbud tree we dug up in our back yard. Planting the tree didn’t take long. One scoop of the backhoe, and we had a nice hole for the tree, and one scoop full of water from the creek, and it was watered in. Then, I got started on the driveway project. A couple hours later, I was almost half way done clearing the final section of driveway ….
I have a couple bigger trees to cut down before I can go any further, but once they’re down, and the stumps are out, the rest of the clearing will go real fast. We should have taken this step a long time ago, since it’s been obvious from day one that we were going to need more than our bare hands to conquer this project, but as usual, money played a big part in our decision making. We knew we’d save a bunch of money doing this stuff ourselves, but we still had to come up with the funds for the backhoe first. Over the next couple years, we’ll certainly get out money’s worth out of it, especially when it comes time to clean out the pond. Preliminary estimates from a couple local contractors put the cost of cleaning out the pond at around $20,000, and that doesn’t include fixing the rest of the dam or building a proper spillway. When I’m done, and we’re living up there, maybe I’ll dig a few home foundations on the side to recoup some of our investment!
Filed under: Construction
