Great Weekend

We had a great weekend and made a lot of progress.

We finished laying the PVC for the waterline and another PVC line that will contain the electric lines
We were then able to back fill the trenches up to where the fittings will connect them to power and well.

We also got the cistern moved to what will be the well house.  No sides on this yet as we want our well guy "Charlie Ward" to have plenty of room to put all the " guts" in and be comfortable while he's doing it.
We also were able to get the Tposts set and the hot wire strung for the cows that are going to be out there just as soon as we get the water flowing.  We still need to put the insulators in a few trees that make up this temporary pasture and tighten up the wire but that shouldn't take much time.

Moving along....We also heard from the bank and our line of credit was approved so we'll  be rockin and rolling fairly quickly.  Money will be available  sometime after Nov. 3rd.  Then it's time for slab for our shop that we will live in so we can get out of this house and put it on the market.

Desperate times!

Desperate times call for desperate measures..

As you can see by this picture we have started the well house.  Even though we have a burn ban in place we took extreme measures so that we would not set the country side on fire.  What you cannot see in the following pictures is the small army of people that we enlisted with pump up sprayers and 1 generator sprayer to quell any spark that might decide to ignite.  We also took a weed eater to the grass and got it down to dirt level so that we could get on with the business of building.  All went very well and the well building is ready for it's guts!

We were also able to get the trench lines dug.  We are slowly getting there.

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.

Stops and starts

 We've had 5 different closing dates so far and we're hoping that this next one will BE THE ONE that finally works.
   To say that we've had some issues is a major understatement...let me explain.
   We have a terrific realtor...a woman who's been in every aspect of the real estate business and she knows her stuff.
   The other realtor is actually part owner of this property and he's 25 years old and this is his first real estate transaction.  And there in lies the problem.  A fairly large piece of property, 2 buyers (the property will be split between us and some friends), and one real estate person who is new to the business and this is his first transaction.  That spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E.  And it's been trouble.

     So this property has a mile of easement before we get to where the property opens up and the property proper begins...then you go another almost mile to get to where we will build.  Normally all you need for an easement for no matter how many people is 30ft...after all an easement is really just a road.  But this wunderkin decided that we all needed 50 ft of easement.  (Let me back up here to explain something else before I confuse you even more).  This whole place was once a very large ranch and it got split into 2 pieces.  Then the first piece was split into 2 sections and our piece was split into 3 sections. So on our side we have a 212 acre parcel, a 350 acre parcel and a 222.88 acre parcel...the last one is ours and we have split it with a friend so we get about 83 acres and they have the rest.  Bob and I will be the only people living out there full time.  Our friends don't plan on moving out there until their kids are out of school and that's about another 8 years.  The other tracts are strictly for hunting and recreation for the people that own them.

So the kid decides that we each should have 50 foot of easement from the County Road all the way to where each of our driveways will connect with the road.  So that's 200 ft of easement.  Which is really quite frankly stupid.  We don't need 200 ft for 2 miles...we need 30 ft. for 2 miles.
     It has to be surveyed and our surveyors found a mistake in the original survey...instead of 200 ft all the way down they had 200 ft from the County Road to where the property opens up and then it shrunk down to 50 ft.  It was recorded wrong and filed so there had to be an amendment done, a correction in the pin placement and then it had to be filed again.  That part was on their side and he just wasn't keeping his eye on the ball.  It's also County Government and the wheels always turn very slowly....it's not something you could walk through and get done. Ugh!
     The next issue that came up was an adjoining property owner had to have a low water crossing redone.  So they had to come on our side of the fence to fix the problem.  Normally that would have been just fine except that they left our side a mess and now we had an issue with the perimeter road not being driveable.  When we first looked at this property we were driven completely around the perimeter....presently  we can't  do that

because of the work.  This had to be fixed before we signed on the dotted line.  There was also a problem with the electric.  Because wonderkin wasn't thinking about the 200 ft easement when he had the electric installed....the pole and guide wire are in that easement....so the pole and anchor have to be moved.  All this stuff takes time unfortunately because we are just some people on a list of things that have to get done.
 There are a lot of emails, talking on the phone and  traveling back and forth to the property to make sure everything is getting done in a timely manner.  Meanwhile we are dealing with someone who had a "mission" trip he's going to go on.  Fine....when you've taken care of all the things you should be taking care of and then when he gets back from that his grandfather dies.  Which I'm very sorry about but you do have business to attend to and you are not doing it.  I don't mean to sound heartless but since this was now the beginning of July and we'd already missed 2 closings and our third is about to expire....I think we all had a reason to be a little perturbed.

Today is July 19th.  The first survey team went out and moved the pin to the proper location.  Our survey team was able to finish up their job and Pedernales Electric Cooperative has been out to move the pole and the anchor.  They will transfer the lines sometime next week but the main part (moving the pole) is done.  Hallelujah. We are going to go out this evening to inspect where they have split the property...hopefully it's where we expected it to be and then we just may....fingers crossed.....get to close by the end of this month instead of the end of August.

All these pictures are taking you on a walk from the front gate back to where Bob and I will build.  At least the general area where we will build....we haven't decided on exactly where to put the house yet but we have a pretty good idea.

The photo up and to the right where you see the power lines..(look closely...power lines in the sky) that is part of The Terry's property.  The Terry's are the people that we are splitting the property with.


Photo to the left is more of the Terry's.  We will both own everything to the right of the road.

Above and to the right is more Terry's but we are getting close to where our property begins.

Photo to the left....our property begins just a little beyond those three trees.

UPDATE:  July 31, 2019.  Closing tentatively set for August 9, 2019 or August 13, 2019.  I'm hoping for the earlier but almost expect the later at this point.
UPDATE: August 13, 2019.  Closing is now set for this Friday.  Wonderkund was supposed to get the electrical easement papers signed on Wednesday, that did not happen.  We were told that He had a meeting with the property owners on Sunday (Aug. 11, 2019) and that didn't happen....one easement was signed yesterday  I have no idea about the other.  I hope to hear something today.  We have our closing set for Friday and we have our closing papers from the title company but our friends do not.  I'm just shaking my head at the absolute craziness of this deal.  I know in the end it WILL be worth it but right now...in the middle of it all...it is just frustrating.

UPDATE;  Today is August 17, 2019 and we closed on the property yesterday.  Sorta anti climatic after all we've been through.  Signing what seemed like an endless array of papers but it's done.  Yeah!!

Picture above the gloves is the well head.  Bob will build a little shed to protect that but the rest of the well components will be in a big well house with the cistern.  That's what is up next.  Stay tuned.

Back to the beginning.

Before we move forward, I thought we might take a step back and see what we built and how it's changed over the last 20 years.

This shot was taken before we began to build.  So today you would be standing in the driveway looking at the front of the house.

Here you can see the beginning of the foundation.  We did not build on a slab...We built on what is known as pier and beam.  The purpose to this was we live in an area that has termites and we were building a log home.  Termites will only go up so far to find their meal and if we built on a concrete wall they would never find our logs.  We also wanted the flexibility that pier and beam afforded us as far as plumbing and electric.  As a bonus we also ended up having more or less a root cellar and a tornado safe space if we needed.

That's me on the corner of the house.

This is my favorite picture from the building process.  I think because it shows the beginning of a wall going up and other logs being placed for their turn in the process.  I remember that day so well...hard to believe that it was over 20 years ago.

We are looking at the front of the house and that upright will eventually hold a French door that leads to a small patio off of the master bedroom in the loft.

This is the front again further along and the beginning of the porch that spans all the way across the front and down the entire West side of the house.  If we are looking at the house from the front the West side would be on our right.

Here's another shot further along and you can see the beginning of the side porch.  I look at those trees and can hardly believe that they have grown so much.

And here is the most recent shot.  It hardly seems possible that 20+ years have passed since we first moved over here...