Construction is under way!! This project was started last year before all the craziness with Whitt's health, Mia & I moving up to the farm; even before winter really got in to the swing of things. Needless to say, this project has been put on hold for quite some time. Now that the dust is settling, and Mia and I are acclimating to farm life, it's time to get-a-move-on and finish this project up! It's hard to fit it in during the busiest seasons of spring and summer up here, but we're doing our best.
For those of you who may not know about the project (or even what the "upper garage" is for that matter), I'll start at the beginning. Before Whitt and Martha moved to the farm, there was only one house, one garage, and the barn on the property. When Whitt & Martha arrived, they built a house a bit farther down the mountain complete with another garage. In 1987 the original house burned down, leaving the garage for the original house as the only structure left standing above the barn on the property. In order to differentiate between garages on the property, the garage higher up the mountain has always been called the "upper" whereas the now main house has been called the "lower" garage.
Now that we're on the same page, the upper garage has essentially just been sitting untouched as a storage area since 1987. It housed our water tank as well as a lot of old antiques, keepsakes, building material; things of that nature. We've now cleaned it out and began renovations!
First (as mentioned above) the old water tank had to be removed and replaced. Being that it's a big concrete tank weighing in at 12,000lbs -- EMPTY -- it was a fairly huge task. Our neighbor, a bit farther up the mountain, Brian was kind enough to lend us a hand. With the use of his massive four wheel drive box truck, we were able to pull the tank out of the garage. You can see below that the pictures were taken during last fall/winter.
Biggest. Truck. Ever.
Brian hooking up the cables.
Hm..let's try it the other way.
Voila!
With Summer in full swing, that means there is a LOT of grass in need of mowing! Our old riding mower did a great job on flat smooth areas, however, there aren't many on a mountain. So we sold the rider (pictured, left) and bought a bigger, badder, more powerful machine. Now we can mow the edges of the fields with ease, and even clear overgrown brush. The new mower is perfect for maintaining our new nature trail, and it's zero-turn radius allows us to mow our orchards without running over plants we want to keep!
After a good break-in mowing of the fields!
