reasons for a long delay

Well, it has been a while since I have posted here. The original reason for this blog was the house boat, but it has been put on hold for several reasons. I plan on returning to this project when I finish the barn and house. The house should be an interesting project as plans right now are for a log house built the old country way. Cut'em down, bark em and stack em. Then chink em.

I had some health problems as I worked on the houseboat structure. I had knee problems that required surgery and had a ruptured disc that required some couch time for it to heal.

While all this happened, we had to take possession of our herd of fainting goats. When we sold our mini farm, we loaned them out to a friend to keep his junk yard grass down, but he was having fence problems.

We had purchased some land next to our new house, but had no fences. So, the next project was to erect fences.

Next project was a saw mill. Purchased plans from Allan at Procut Portable Sawmills.

Then there was a small chicken house so the wife could buy some laying hens.

Spent part of the spring and summer of 09 salvaging downed trees. We had several tornadoes that took down large pine tree and I would remove them from people's property for the lumber.

Then we decided to put our house on the market with the idea that when it sold, we would build a log house on our 10 acres next door. Well, it was listed for 7 months and sold just before Christmas.

Well, that was well and good because we had planned to live in our rv while we built our house. Only problem was, the spot where we wanted to build our house, turned out to be nothing more than a mud hole in December. Tried to clean it off so we could bring in fill, but the dozed almost got stuck. It is now June and the plot is just now dry enough to excavate the sand/clay ( mud when wet) so we can put in some red clay that we can compact.

But in the mean time, started sawing lumber for our barn. At this point, the barn is ready for siding. The roof is on and will be pouring a concrete slab in the stalls next week. All the lumber for the barn was sawn from salvaged timber except for treated poles to go in the ground.

Also, my dirt guy will start excavating for the fill next week. So, we will have a lot going on for the rest of the year, finishing the barn and starting the house.

I have left out a lot of things that just got done. Like water lines from the road to our building site, cutting a right of way for power lines to our building site.