A few months back, I posted about our plans for our mountain property.

At the time, we were expecting my parents to move onto the land by the end of the year. Unfortunately, that was not to be. My dad's health worsened, and he passed away in late October.

My mom is still planning to move onto the property sometime next year, and so my husband and I went ahead and started clearing the ground for her building site in the month of November. We rented a trackhoe for a week, and worked 12 hour days to get everything finished. We even had a couple of friends come to help us one of the days. It was a BIG job. We used two tanks of diesel, took four trips to the dump with a trailer full of old barn junk our property's previous owners had left behind, and got nice, large blisters on our hands.

But so worth it! Now I can walk around in the area where our barn used to sit, without tripping over junk, sinking into a mud hole, or getting tangled up in brambles and thorns. Check out the difference a week worth of hard work made:

This is what the area looked like before we started.

And here's what it looks like now:

You can hardly tell they're the same place, right!? The area is now smoothly graded to accommodate my mom's living quarters. (She hasn't decided yet whether she's going to move her singlewide mobile home onto the property, or buy one of those fancy "park model" RVs.) And there should be plenty of room left over for a garden or some nice landscaping.

By the time we finished the work, the weather was still mild for November, so we tried spreading rye grass seed. But the weather promptly turned cold and the grass never came up. Hopefully we won't experience too much erosion between now and spring.

Next on the property work agenda:

• Get some plumbing and electric work done
• Move Mom onto the property
• Tear down old, decrepit house
• Build a greenhouse aquaponics system
• Build our tiny home!

I'll be sure to keep y'all posted.

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