T had a week long break from school in May and was planning to take the whole week off work so we could get some things done on the house. Unfortunately he had some things he just couldn't miss so he had to work a couple of days, but over the course of two weeks he did take 5 full days off.
He and one of our friends from church had taken some chainsaws out there on the weekend and took down a tree. They spent about 3 hours and then we spent another hour the next day gathering the wood. It looked like it was going to be a looooong process to get the place cleaned up. Here is a before of some of the piles of sticks/branches.
But then Grandpa and his trusty tractor came to the rescue and helped us get about 100x further than we thought we would! Grandpa could pull a tree out in a matter of minutes with that tractor! And with the forks he could clean a huge pile of tree branches in seconds! It was so great! They laughed when he stuck the forks in and came back up with a lawn chair stuck in there. :)
He and Grandma came out 4 different days and we made some awesome progress. They even had time to tear down the old chicken coop that was precariously leaning. I'm surprised it hadn't come down in the big wind storm we had a few months ago. It was in pretty tired shape.
There were quite a few dead/dying trees out front that he was able to clear and haul to a big burn pile. We'll have to wait till we get the water hooked up before we can get rid of them.
There was one nice tree that I would have liked to have kept but it was so close to the house it had to go. :( Here's the hole after it came out.
The girls and I made sandwiches every day and took them out. We had picnics on the front porch, and one in the house because it was windy.
This is Peaches' pout-pout face. She is starting to get a little bit of the "Mommys". She's definitely not as bad as Peanut was at this age, but at least once a day Mommy is the only one she wants.
Grandpa found a tire and strung it up next to the blue swing. This is one of those "things" for me...I've always dreamed of having an old farmhouse with a tire swing. Love it!
This is Peaches' pout-pout face. She is starting to get a little bit of the "Mommys". She's definitely not as bad as Peanut was at this age, but at least once a day Mommy is the only one she wants.
Grandpa found a tire and strung it up next to the blue swing. This is one of those "things" for me...I've always dreamed of having an old farmhouse with a tire swing. Love it!
After the guys did all the major work with the tractor we took the girls out and had them help us clean up the leftover sticks. Boo was a HUGE help and worked tirelessly. She must have picked up hundreds of sticks!
"What? I like picking up sticks."
It's kind of hard to tell but here is a before I took back in March. The buckbrush windbreak was way overgrown. It had several layers and had grown up all the way to where it was even with the front of the garage.
You can see that we gained a huge space by taking it back to one layer!
And we now have a nice pile of firewood!
More pictures tomorrow!
