So they started in earnest on the site work! We went up the hill after Sarah had work yesterday and the landscape had completely changed! Unfortunately I had to go to class, or we would have gotten pictures then. They've cut the entire driveway and made a slight trench for drainage, cut the turn around, and stoned perhaps the first 250-300 feet. I caught a video as I rolled in.
Even with all the work and heavy equipment, they managed to spare our asparagus!
Sarah was worried about the balsam fir, but that made it out unscathed as well. In fact, it'll probably be glad next spring for the weaker competition!
They also did more stump removal and scraping of the site! Here's a panoramic from up top.
We've got a kink or two to work out with the building inspector, but it looks like things are on their way. Now if only I can learn how to do my schoolwork faster so I have a chance at getting it erected!
So this is what our little clearing for our cabin looked liked this morning
And by the afternoon, it looked like this
Back in July it looked more like this
And further back in March, I don't believe we were even thinking of a cabin yet
It was raining Thursday so the excavators couldn't begin work, but while I was running, about a half mile past the property towards Marathon, a truck passed with me a dozer on the bed. I wondered if it might be for us.
Sure enough, they had left a dozer and an excavator just off the driveway. Sarah and I were about to put some freecycled spruce trees in, when I heard a diesel engine come to life and the clatter of a tracked vehicle working its way up the driveway. John Murdoch felt bad for not being able to work on the driveway, so he showed up to clear stumps and start to scrape the site. He worked for maybe 3 or 3.5 hours and boy did it transform the clearing. This thing was a beast, and the operator was a surgeon. Unfortunately, this clip is probably the least impressive 60 seconds of what he did today, but you get the idea.
And the size of this thing! It was hard for us to get our perspective right, we didn't realize how huge it was until he left and we could get closer
He even did a good job of stacking firewood that I hadn't gotten to yet. Sarah did notice that it certainly made a mess of things. She took this beautiful picture in the morning when we first got there
We survived the flood! McGraw was in a state of emergency when the tropical storm brought its rain to central New York a couple of weeks ago. Just about every creek that could flood did flood, and by the end of the night, there was only one road left open into McGraw...and it involved going way out of our way, so that instead of five miles and eleven minutes, it took us eleven miles and twenty-five minutes to get home from Cortland. Fortunately, we had no water damage, just a dramatic evening!
Those pictures are of the creek through the middle of town the day after all the flooding. The day before the picture was taken, the water was high enough to close the road.
A couple days later, Roscoe and I took a walk down to the creek at the bottom of our property, and it was still soaring pretty high.
(I found this plant on the way back up to the top of the hill, and I have no idea what it was, but I thought it looked pretty.)
Roscoe wasn't much help in identifying it, though.
In other news, I had the chance to visit Cacie and Galen and meet Colin! We had a lovely time.
We then celebrated our first frost Saturday night. This is the view outside...
and inside...
Fortunately the world keeps turning. We even managed to make the most amazing pepperoni pizza ever! :)
