Building Update. . . and More

 DH's shop had very little done to it in October and November.  We finished putting on the siding and the door trim.

Finally, in December, DH and I installed the overhead doors. It took a long time from when we ordered them, for them to actually come in--right before DH left for his hunting trip out West in November.  

Installing the doors before Christmas was pretty much the end of forward progress on our building projects until Spring.

In the Spring (I can't remember the exact month), DH began doing the dirt work needed to reroute the  drainage around the East side of his shop. Remember that we had to bring in lots of sand to raise the East end of the shop when getting ready to build it?  Well, that left a huge drop off from the back door of the shop to the ground.  And just adding many feet of fill dirt would have backed up the entire drainage around our house, yard, barn, and now shop.  We needed to move what we refer to as 'the river' (the path that rain water and snowmelt take from the front yard, around the house, through the backyard and barnyard and out to the back field) out further away from the shop so that there was room for both fill dirt and a not too steep slope for runoff.

"The river" in early Spring.

Note that it runs quite a bit to the left of the big oak tree in the field.

Early in the dirt work, he got fed up with the tire falling off the tractor.  He had repaired it for good (he thought) after the fiasco in the field hauling sap this year.  But, apparently it wasn't totally fixed.  Because it fell off again, and again, and again when he was trying to scoop and move dirt for the drainage relocation.

One Saturday, I needed to run to town for chicken food, and DH decided to go along.  He wanted to stop at the John Deere dealer near the farm store.  We'd been talking, for years, about replacing our 790 with a larger tractor.  And now, with all the wheel problems, DH was mentally ready to buy that newer tractor.  He wanted to see what used ones were in stock that would suit our needs.

I'll save you the long winded tale, but turned out they had exactly the tractor that we both wanted.  And it wasn't used, it was brand new.  And they were running financing deals and other incentives on new tractors.  And when we talked to the sales guy and got down to the nitty gritty on this particular tractor that was out front that we wanted to make our very own, come to find out that tractor was an unused, unsold, 2022 model, which qualified it--until the end of the month--for zero down, 0% financing for 84 months.  Plus, it had the loader we wanted, and we could get a discount on two more implements for it (the pallet forks DH has been lusting after for years, and a wider box blade than the one we had at home) AND the monthly payments with all that came in less than the monthly payments on DH's pick-up which we would be making the very last payment on in October of this year.

PERFECT!!!  It just worked out in so many ways, how could we not buy that tractor?!?  So we did.

It's a John Deere 4044R, and it works so well for everything we want to do.  And the wheel doesn't fall off!!  We were able to sell our 790 and smaller box blade a few weeks later to a guy who didn't mind the wheel falling off issue as he does heavy equipment repair for a living.  Win-win.

Rerouting the river to approach the oak tree from the right.

So, while not much of anything has been done inside DH's shop this year, there has been lots and lots of outdoor aspects of our building projects accomplished.  Especially with the help of the new tractor.

Quite a large area of dirt relocated (all to the east side of DH's shop)

in our drainage project.

North end of the dirt work area;

note the grassy strip, the old river ran below it and 

the new river runs above it.

Left side has been built up with dirt removed from the right.

middle section of the dirt work area

Southern section of the dirt work area;

notice how close to the wood pile near the spruce tree DH removed dirt to change the slope.

Compare to location of the river and wood pile in the picture from early Spring

before work began.

New route for the river.

The area East of the shop still needs more fill brought in closer to the building, but we are done with the river rerouting.  That dirt will have to come from somewhere else.  (We've been talking about digging a pond at the marsh for many, many years, and that would be an easy source of fill dirt; just not sure it's on the docket for 2024. . . )