Progress

Bob finished up with the cattle guards so we loaded them up and made the trek out to the property to drop them off before the fence guys come out to begin the fence building.
We've decided on a 5 strand bobwire fence.  The fence is 54 inches high.  Top strand is 10 inches from second strand.  This is done so that when deer jump the fence they DONT get their leg(s) caught in it.  Then the rest are evenly space with the last strand being 16 inches from the ground.  This is done so that hogs can crawl under as well as deer and fawns.  If you've ever seen a deer caught in a fence its heartbreaking.  And a lot of ranchers don't give a lot of thought to the spacing of the wires.  It's got to be a most horrible death...I've rescued a deer or two caught in a fence and it's not something I want to repeat.
We headed put to the property today to see how far the fence guys had gotten and were pleasantly surprised in that they had gotten a lot further than we anticipated.  Yippee!

This pic was taken on Wednesday and this next picture was taken on Saturday.

If you look closely you can see that all the strands of the bobwire have been strung.  Small steps.
The trenches for the cattle guards got dug but when we attempted to put them in we discovered that they were about 2 feet short.

Hopefully that will get corrected sometime this week and we can place them where they belong. 
Next we're going to concentrate on getting more things done at home for example: we have 8 (3000 gallon) rainwater collection tanks.  We have decided to leave 2 here at the house.  We will take the rest out to the property.  The Terry's ( people we bought property with) need 2...1 for water cistern  and 1 for rainwater collection.  Bob and I will take the last 4, 1 will be for cistern and 3 will be for rainwater collection. The tanks are all connected together so we need to cut the connecting PVC and cap it off so that it just fills the first 2 tanks.  We've really concentrated on using all the water in the tanks so that we could move them....wasn't real difficult as we've had no rain and the Koi ponds lose an inch or two every day in the 100 degree heat.  So the ponds have had to be topped off almost weekly.
There's  also more good news to relay...there's rain in the forecast.   Let's  hope it transpires.

Burn Ban

Nothing strikes more fear in me or anyone who lives in a rural area than fire.  Without the benefit of a paid fire fighting team or hydrants and having only a well to fight a fire with can be a pretty scary experience.  This is not in any way a critique of volunteer units as they do a darn good job with the tools that they have to work with.  I'm just saying that with a paid force you have people on duty 24/7 to do what needs to be done immediately when called.  With a volunteer force you get what you get when you get it.  That being said...we are under a burn ban until we get some significant rains.
A burn ban is exactly what it sounds like.  No outdoor burning till the ban is lifted.  This means no welding for us and by the strictest letter of the law no one should even be grilling or B-B-Q-ing.
If we'd already had the well house done then we could move forward because I could be ready with a hose to put out any fires that an errant spark might ignite.  But we didn't close until a couple of weeks ago and the ban was already in place.  Se la vie.
So until we can begin any type of outside construction at the property we will do what we can here at the current house and that means...cattle guards.  We need 3 cattle guards and Bob can build them at his shop without setting the whole countryside on fire.

Picture above is the beginning of a cattle guard.  And the following pictures are of the work in progress.

This next picture is of a tree we found while exploring another part of the property.  It's huge!

These last 2 pictures are of just a couple of the tanks that are on the property.