Country Life

We had planned to go up to Camp Freedom last week since the kids had Thursday and Friday off from school. I was picturing a few perfect Indian summer days with gorgeous fall colors and just enough bite in the air to make the campfire feel delicious. Because we could go up mid-week, Ray and I thought it would be a perfect chance to meet with some contractors. Then we checked the weather. The forecast for the planned trip was high in the 40's and a rain/snow mix. Cold and wet - not ideal camping weather for even the heartiest Northerner. Ray had made appointments with two excavators, one well digger and the electric co-op that services our area. He was able to reschedule everything for Thursday and just drove up for the day by himself. Two of the meetings were with men named Jeff. We joked that they were probably the same person. Well, they were two different people but two of the contractors did have a connection. The well digger sheepishly admitted that he was the cousin of one of the excavators that had come out that morning. The admission went something like this, " Yeah, he's my cousin. But I don't want you to think that we're all related up here."

Rationale

Since outlining the scope of the project in more detail, I feel like I have to remind myself why I am doing this. The end result seems obvious. We want a little cabin in the woods to spend our weekends and summer vacations with friends and family. But in our part of the world, cabins in the woods are a dime a dozen. If we had saved a little longer, and looked a little harder, we probably could have found one. But we never set out to buy someone else's cabin. What we really set out to find was a project. We have set what seems like an impossible goal and it will be great fun to see if we can accomplish it. We are also doing this with our kids in mind. We have two very modern children who are growing up in an increasingly virtual world. They love the computer, video games, television and desperately want cell phones. I want them to grow up knowing how to make something with their own two hands. I am also hoping they will learn that with hard work and ingenuity, they can accomplish anything they can dream up. If throughout the course of this project, they absorb these lessons, I will feel a huge sense of accomplishment. Some people use sports or religion, but in our family, we've chosen to use construction as the vehicle to teach our boys how to be strong, capable men. So in that sense, this is really much more than a cabin. Now I just need to remind myself of that this weekend while I'm standing out in the rain and snow waiting for the excavation contractor to show up!

The Nitty Gritty

The planning stages of this project are starting to get complicated. Ray spent last week on the phone with many of the different people we are going to need to get this thing underway. He called two excavators, the electric company, and a well digger. We are going to be out there next week and plan to meet with them then to get some bids on the work. It is difficult to make appointments with them because, not only do we not have a phone number to give them, we don't have an address. We need a fire number and it costs $25 dollars to get one. Once you pay your money, the city then posts a sign near your driveway, which we don't have yet. The excavator will clear the driveway. As long as he's there with a bulldozer, it makes sense to have him clear the building site and possibly dig the pit for the privy. That means that before we have him do the work, we have a lot of big questions to answer. The well digger can't do his job until we have the building site as well as the privy site settled either. He also needs a soil test to be done before he'll do anything. The electric is also crazy complicated. They will come in and run a line out to our building site and install a temporary meter so we have power to run our tools. That would be very good. They bury the cables out there so the trees don't continually knock out power. We have to provide them with a trench to run the cables in. Sounds like a job for the guy with the bulldozer, right? The only problem with that is they have to bury the cables before November 1, because of the weather. They will also charge us a minimum monthly charge for the power whether we are there using it or not. That makes us think we should wait and get the power drop done in the spring and save a few bucks. This doesn't even begin to address the issue of permits. (Yes, we're pulling permits. . .) Everyone wants their own permit pulled, township, country, state, etc. They weren't kidding when they call this raw land. We are literally starting from scratch and the reality of that is setting in slowly but surely!