Meeting the neighbors

I have a ton of photos from the last couple of days, but right now I really need to get outside and help move some bricks. Our neighbors have been watching us build the burnhouse, and then saw the kids and I working to clear the debris and misc wood etc that the last owners left behind. The other day, our neighbor came over and offered to tear down the barn that was collapsed on one of the corners of the property. Then he pulled out a dead tree. Then he burned the barn, buried all the rubble, and smoothed the ground to prep it for new seed. Then he took the backhoe over to the old broken down storm shelter, collapsed it, and buried all of it as well. Today he is helping Jack spread seed on all the smoothed ground, and tomorrow they are using another big piece of machinery to clear out the last two patches of junk that was left here. By Friday, the whole 5 acres should be looking like a brand new place!! I am so excited! Shane and his big equipment saved us months and months of physical labor! That only leaves us the one corner where the remaining outbuildings need some TLC, and then we can focus on re-graveling our driveway, building our gardenbeds, and sprucing up the outside of the house.... all the stuff that makes it pretty!

He had about 2/3 of the barn down before I took this photo. This was the last portion right before it came down.


The dead tree in the front is the one he pulled out. I love what these machines can do!


Just to give you an idea of the size of the pile that was burnt, that big huge dead tree was laid over the top of the pile for burning.


This is after he got it all buried, with fresh dirt on top, and smoothed. There is a cement slab that you can't really see here in front of that smoothed section. We left it because it is the perfect size for a half-court basketball court. We are going to put the jungle gym set where he cleared out the old storm shelter. I'll be back later with kid pictures! Matt has a game tonight, Faith and Kyle have their first soccer practice, and I have some other misc photos to post. TTYS!