Posted on by Emily

DAY 133

Well, a lot has happened in the last 3 weeks:

  1. We got our building permit! After the “plan review fee”, the “privilege tax”, the “educational impact fee”, and a handful of other absurd fees, I’m pretty sure we’ve paid for a county employee’s annual salary in order to obtain our permit.
  2. It has rained approximately 67″  this February, which has put everyone in construction behind and has delayed us breaking ground until the earthwork guys catch up.  Patiently waiting…..
  3. I had surgery and Josh has been buried in his Finance class so we hadn’t been able to go for a site visit until yesterday.
  4. Our neighbor’s barn is nearly finished.  Our construction envy is growing by the minute.
  5. The critters have come out in full force! We had a record 60 videos on the trail camera this time, which is about 5X as many as we’ve had before.

 

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Neighbor’s barn.  Maybe one day there will be a structure on our property, too.  Not jealous or anything.

Focusing on our wildlife for now.

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I think this is an owl on the ground to the right of the trees.  Josh agreed with my assessment for once.

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Up close and personal with Bambi.

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Practicing for her real ID picture.

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Turkey invasion!

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House cat makes an appearance.

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Turkeys are back for the first recorded snow since we’ve had the camera!

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Our resident black squirrel with white-tipped tail dashing by on a sunny day.  I can’t wait for Bu (our indoor house cat) to lay his eyes on this guy.  He’s going to lose his mind.

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Evidently our neighbors believe in free-range horses.  Exhibit A.

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Exhibit B.

Remind me to look into a property fence…

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Pretty blue bird on the ground below the trees.  Looked very busy.

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Cute little bunny! Another creature for Bu to go nuts over from his indoor perch.

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And finally, more snow! It didn’t snow at all at our current house on the other side of town.  I can’t wait to be in the new house and watch it snow this time next year.

Patiently waiting…..

Posted on by Emily

Day 112

We put up a “gate” this weekend at the property.  And by we, I mean my dad and Joshua.  I was busy reviewing trail camera footage.  More on that in a minute.

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This is a temporary setup to try to deter unauthorized visitors.  But, between the medium-duty chain, the plastic sign, and the fact that there’s no lock, it’s basically Fort Knox.

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Hopefully people will get the message.

Back to the trail camera.

The house cat made another appearance, as did the shaky branch.  We had a deer family and a squirrel.  I was about to report to the guys that there wasn’t anything exciting, when I came across this fella:

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I wish I could share the video so you could see this creature in action.  He has a most unusual gait and what appears to be a large head.

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I was pretty sure it was a wild boar, as our neighbor did mention she’s seen a few.

When the guys got back in the truck for lunch, I handed over my laptop for them to take a look.

About .283 seconds later, Josh said, “Um, that is an opossum.”

Just call me Bindi Irwin.

Posted on by Emily

Day 101

Greetings!

Well, the house isn’t done yet…or started for that matter.

We did, however, close on our construction loan.  Our plans have been submitted for our construction permit and we’re hoping to get the green light this coming week.

Though there’s not much to see just yet, we still make regular visits to the property to check on it and collect the footage from the trail camera.

After reviewing last week’s footage, it seems we aren’t the only ones eagerly awaiting construction to start:

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Hiiiii….

Screen Shot 2020-01-26 at 2.05.13 PMThis is the second time we have seen this truck.  If there’s a next time, I’ll be running their plates and sending them a note with the blog URL.

This is also the second time we’ve seen this little guy/gal:

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The first time we saw him/her, Josh had reviewed the footage before I did.  I asked him if there was anything noteworthy and our conversation went something like this:

J: “A few vehicles, a coyote, and a house cat.”

E: “A house cat?”

J: “Yeah, a house cat.”

E: “As opposed to what? A leopard? A lion? A bobcat? Isn’t it just a cat?”

J: “No, you can tell it’s a house cat.”

This went on for a while and we eventually determined that while I would categorize all domestic felines as “cats”, Josh grew up with farm cats that lived in the barn and did not come in the house so therefore just “cat” as a descriptor is a little too vague.

I am assuming this critter’s full figure is what led Josh to determine that it is clearly a “house cat”.

Hopefully by the time the house cat returns, construction will be underway!

P.S. This is not the first time the term “house cat” has come up in our marriage.  When shopping for shampoo to bathe our (house) cat, Bu, all the pet store had was “show cat” shampoo.  Josh rolled his eyes and exclaimed, “We don’t need “show cat” shampoo, we just need “house cat” shampoo!”.

 

Posted on by Emily

Day 83

Well, 2020 is off to a strong start!

Items of note:

  1. We close on our construction loan next week.
  2. Our septic permit has been approved.
  3. We should have everything together to apply for our building permit by the end of the week.

We drove out to the property this past weekend and Josh poured concrete markers for the property corners.  I helpfully supervised from the passenger seat of the truck and documented the process:

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Our new equine neighbors decided this was pretty interesting and came to the edge of their paddock to see what on earth we were doing:

IMG-3233They pretended to eat hay when I caught them checking us out.

IMG-3234After the second property corner was poured, they lost interest.

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I don’t typically go all the way to the property corners to take photos so it was neat to capture this angle from the front corner.  You can see a sliver of the easement road on the right where our driveway will start, our gorgeous, orange septic field fence to the left of that, and then finally, a little farther to the left is the location of our future house, as indicated by the giant green arrow.

I decided I really like this angle and I think I will make a point to take photos from this angle throughout the building process.

Let’s keep those permits coming so we can break ground soon!