Getting Organized

Dave asked me when we were going to the property next, and we settled on a Sunday to Tuesday trip. We departed around 7:00 AM Sunday morning. The trip was fairly uneventful.

I needed to fill some LP tanks at Scholze's, but they were closed so we took off to the property and arrived around 11:30. Upon pulling into the driveway, one of our dead oak trees had fallen across the driveway. Fortunately, the trunk of the tree was in the timber, but the limbs were blocking our way in.

This is exactly why we needed an ATV with a wagon on the property. I went up to the utility building, hooked up the wagon, and headed to our work which was, in reality, only a hundred feet away. I started cutting things up, and Dave worked on filling the wagon and moving the debris to our fire pit near the building.

We also had a small, tall, but dead pine tree near the building that had snapped off. I have no idea how it did not land on the roof of the building and damage the steel. In any case, I also cut that up but was able to manually move the firewood to our fire pit area.

I had also purchased two more shelving units and transported them on the flatbed trailer. We unloaded them, but will assemble these later. The Bravo trailer is in the SE corner of the building, and I can not move that out until I move the camper out. I can not move the camper out until I fix the roof membrane. So yeah, I have more shelves, but can't assemble/install them yet. The purpose of these shelves is to store lumber. I am a bit of a lumber hoarder, and have a ton of treated and cedar lumber at my home. I want to get that out of the weather, but also want to re-purpose this lumber into things we need to build at the property. For example, we need another wood storage structure near the building, as we will soon have more firewood than we are able to burn in a given weekend.

Once we were settled in to our camper inside of the building, we started looking at the shelving that Lorraine and I had assembled the prior week. We were able to level/plumb things as good as we could, and now we just need to get them tied back to the walls. Everything feels sturdy and sound.

We then started to clear items out of the Bravo trailer. The Bravo has served as our "portable shed", and contained all of the things you would need to camp or paddle. We will eventually rent out access to this when we open for business. But, we wanted to get the paddling stuff out of there and on the shelving in the building. So that was our focus.

A good supper and sitting by the campfire. Or, better said.... we sat on the porch watching and feeding the fire in the fire pit. Funny how we always seem to sit on our chairs on the porch instead of being by the fire. I was able to show Dave my intentions for landscaping the area at the driveway split, clearing and planting birch trees I have at my home in my garden. I need the trees to adapt and grow a bit, with the target of planting them in the fall of 2025.

Good sleep. Dave slept later than he normally does. I was up early (4:30 AM!) as usual, and spent most of my time burning the smaller debris (we had piles and piles of the smaller stuff) in large quantities. In the morning, it is normally calm and there is enough dew/wetness that I can have larger fires than normal. There was a fire warning due to low humidity and winds, but in the morning it was calm and enough dew to not concern me. I also started to stack the firewood in a temporary place near the fire pit. When Dave finally awoke, he was surprised to find I had everything cleaned up.

After a good breakfast of biscuits and gravy, we continued cleaning and burning, but started to get the fire to die down for the day. The wind was supposed to pick up later, and we were supposed to get some rain/storms later in the day.

We took off to Scholze's to get our LP tanks filled. These will be in the building... a 30# tank for the camper when the present tank is empty, and a 15# tank for the grill I will be bringing from home on a future trip. We also stopped by Hansen's and pick up some pork chops for supper instead of the original plan to go out to eat.

After we returned, we started to tackle some of the other debris on the driveways and clearings. We also went back to the camping clearing to remove the kayak storage brackets from the trees they were mounted to. We also loaded up the garbage cans to take them up to the building. Interesting that we have migrated from garbage can storage to Bravo storage to, finally, building storage. But now that we have a building, we need to start to reduce the other clutter on the property. We are a member of Leave No Trace, but I don't feel we are living that when there is "stuff" here and there. I want it all cleaned up.

I also pulled out the fence posts and rebar I had gotten when we were working on stairs to go to the water. I need the rain to rinse off the fence posts, but on the next trip I will try to get them in the building also... along with scrap lumber from stairway, lumber I had up there for Envirolok stairs, and a John Deere wagon that has been sitting there for some time. We have more of this type of cleanup to do, but are getting close to zero clutter and more in line with Leave No Trace.

We unloaded and organized the items in the two garbage cans (it used to be five garbage cans), and will now use these as, well, garbage cans. We spent much time on organization of the building, and are starting to see the most efficient way to do this organization. Things are looking pretty good.

We had a good supper. We had fire, but had it in my Solo Stove that has a spark arrester and a heat deflector. This allows us to have fire with reduced risk of it spreading.

Another good night of sleep. Dave came out to relieve himself to learn that it was actually 6:30ish... he thought it was 4:30ish... he had slept that well. Breakfast burritos, clean up, and departure.

Dave is such a good friend and really likes going up to the property. We are blessed to have him involved, as he brings a certain perspective that I value as we develop the property.

After arriving home, I received a call from G&S Trucking / Opelt Quary. I was having four loads of rock delivered, and the driver felt I only needed three loads. So we went with the three loads. On the next trip, we will need to work on spreading that rock on the east and south sides of the building. This will then allow us to erect firewood storage and a few other things I have in mind.

Great trip with a great friend. We got a lot done and it is looking good.