We love owning a small acreage. There is plenty of room for all the things we like to do. The miniature horses have enough space they can gallop around when the urge strikes. The shop is just over 300 feet from the house which keeps the noise I make there at bay. There is plenty of room for parking for our workers along the western property line. The concrete area in front of the shop is big enough to hold all of the materials and finished projects as needed. Out back there is room for our boneyard and more storage. And the railroad circles the entire property with more than a thousand feet of track. All of it is cool!
But as we landscape we have discovered that on a small areage everything is much larger than living on a small city lot. The driveway is 400 feet long. That's a LOT of gravel and pavement too. The lawn is more than 10,000 square feet. Many hundreds of loads of soil and gravel have been trucked in and then carefully shaped to transform the flat property we purchased into a gently rolling estate. I looked at the hour meter on our little tractor and it testifies to more than 500 hours doing that job. There are hundreds of feet of fencing we have welded up and many hundreds more to go before we are done. Even the flower beds are much larger than what we were used to on our previous homes. There is definitely extra work with a larger property but the space we are privileged to enjoy is well worth the effort.
With the inclement weather forecast this morning, the paving was put off until Monday. The weatherman was wrong however and the rain held off. I spent much of the day on the tractor almost finishing up the grading of the lawn area.
Monday is going to be a very busy day with the paving crew on site and the arrival of the turf truck as well. Our crew will be doing painting, concrete work and laying the turf on the lawn. By day's end on Monday the place will look a whole lot more finished. We may just be done in time for the wedding...
-grampa dan
