That winter was harsh, we had frozen water and sewer lines. Temperatures stayed well below freezing for weeks,  it was something I don’t want to relive. We paid for moving early.

After winter work continued on cleaning up and finishing our work. The acre field next to the house was cleared and brush hogged in preparation for planting. Because the place was formerly a saw mill there were pieces of logs scattered throughout the fields. They would remain well hidden until you ran one through the brush hog.

The shops on the place were missing all the big doors, but did have nice concrete floors and potential. The biggest shop is roughly 30×60 and it has two levels which divide it in half. The bottom half had a foot of dirt over the floor with tree roots growing into the shop. On the back of the lower level there is a 30′ addition to the shop.

 

 

 

 

 

Cleaning the trash and dirt from the shops took a lot of work. Trees had grown around all the shops and had to be cut down and cleared. There were logs hidden everywhere. It takes a lot of time to clean up land. Luckily I had already been down this road before on my other piece of property and had a good chainsaw and tractor to get the work done.

That summer I tried to get someone to bale my place on shares with no luck. I could not find anyone who was interested in baling it. With no luck we decided to invest in the equipment to bale it ourselves. My long range plan was to add cattle to our homestead, but I wanted to make sure I could be providing the food for those cattle first.

I already had the tractor, what I would need to bale was a baler, mower and a rake. Through craigslist shoping I found everything I needed at a good price: