Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Roads,Rocks and a Kitchen remodel



Our out-side kitchen served its purpose . We had a Coleman stove , Oil lamps, cupboards to store things and a table with chairs. The hard thing was hauling the ice chests back and forth with enough ice to keep the food cold.We tried to eat as fresh as possible but always kept canned soups for extended stays.






We are making some progress on the roads, we can safely drive to the back with out puncturing a tire. It takes a lot of work to dig the yopans out of the ground, they spread by their root systems and seem to go in every direction.


The wood pile was created by chopping down all those trees. This is another advantage to going the slower route, we were able to save wood that normally would have gone up in smoke.
When we cut down the cedars we also saved the poles for future building. We are hoping the landscape is starting to look like a Park, we just need a little grass!

We have a collection of holey rocks that we are saving for landscaping projects in the future. They were hauled by our 10 foot trailer that was the second purchase we made for the land and the trailer has paid for its' self many, many times!!!
The reason we got a 10 ft was that we own a med size truck (ford ranger V6) the weight limit is about 3,000 lbs. It would be very dangerous to pull more than a truck can handle and 3000 lbs is about what will fit in a 10 ft trailer (except a yard/3'X3'X3' - of gravel, dirt, sand or any dense material weighs about 2000 lbs ) The only disadvantage is the single axle, which means it only has 2 tires instead of 4 (because the trailer is so small). Where the two different axles make a difference is when you are backing up, the one axle trailer has a mind of its own and is very hard to get it to go where you need it to.


When we got the trailer we added more screws to the floor boards, coated everything with a heavy duty water sealer, made a tail gate of 2"X 12" lumber with 2"X4" cross bracing that doubles as a ramp, lined the bed with 1/2" plywood water sealer coated on the inside and painted on the out-side. It has carried lumber, rocks and compost with ease!