Busy Mother's Day Weekend

That was fast!  The sheetrock guys showed up at the cabin on Friday afternoon and in two hours or so, they were done.  Wow!

Living room & hallway looking from the side door/carport

Kitchen walls

Bedroom (from hallway)

Bathroom (obviously)

Down the road, dump truck load after dump truck load kept coming to the main house to dump fill dirt into the block foundation.  They spread it out with a tractor and then went over it with a vibrating compactor to smooth it out and make sure it was, well...compacted.  There is a little block work left to do - one side was left open for the dump truck and tractor to get in/out - and then it will be time to pour the concrete.

Carport to the left, front porch in foreground and main house area everywhere else

Dirt is graded up to the edge of the carport on one side

While all of that was going on Friday afternoon, Terrell and I were busy clearing brush in a ditch next to the cabin.  He was pulling some old fence out of the overgrowth with his truck, while I was cutting weeds and small trees from the ditch and surrounding areas.  We wanted to clean up his future view looking out over the field between his house and ours.  I don't have any before and after pictures, but I do have some product placement instead.  Here are some tools that I have purchased to get work done on the farm.  They have saved me so much time and effort.

I use Consumer Reports and Amazon to review products before I make a purchase.  I was looking to replace my old gas chainsaw.  Consumer Reports gave this one a great review:

EGO Li-on (battery operated)16" chainsaw

I initially scoffed at battery-operated chainsaws, but the CR score compared to some of the Stihl chainsaws along with the Amazon reviews I read sold me.  THIS THING CUTS!  It's got a 56 volt lithium ion battery.  It has approximately 1.5 hours of cutting (actual trigger pull) time per charge, which for me has been almost a full afternoon of tree cutting.  It takes about an hour on the charger to bring it back to a full charge.  The batteries comes in various amperage sizes (1, 2, 5 and 7 amps).  The 16 inch saw comes with a 5 amp battery.  You can also purchase a 7 amp battery which can give you up to 2 hours of cutting time.  It's also so much more quiet than a gas powered saw.  I love it.  I've probably cut down about 50 trees so far, ranging in size from an inch or two up to about 8-10 inches in diameter.  I'll never go back to a gas powered saw again.

Another item in my bag of tricks is my new brush cutter.

This baby was sorely needed around the farm.

I already had a nice Stihl string trimmer, but I needed something more robust.  Something I could attach a blade to and do some serious cutting.  This fit the bill perfectly.  With that 3 sided blade I can cut everything from grass to thick weeds to small saplings.  We have so many black berry brambles and small trees and bushes (less than an inch) growing along edges and fields that a string trimmer just wouldn't handle.  The model doesn't matter.  If you need to do more than just edge grass, get yourself a blade on that trimmer/brushcutter.

The most important product of all that I just started using on the farm is this:

Rock solid cupholder!

I was lamenting to Neta about my lack of a cup holder on the tractor.  Hey...a hard working farmer needs to stay hydrated.  Neta did some research and found this.  It's magnetic and STRONG!  It'll hold at least 10 pounds.  I've been using it for a couple of weeks and it hasn't budged, no matter how bumpy the ride is.

She also found some magnetic hooks for holding items that I can't carry by hand when I'm on the tractor, but those have yet to be tested.  If I need to carry stuff on the tractor I use this:

Think it looks rickety?  It is!  But it gets the job done.

I throw in my chainsaw, brushcutter, rake, chain oil, gloves, etc. and I'm off to clear some land.

If you've read this far down, congratulations!  If you're a Mother, Happy Mothers Day!  If you're not, find one and wish her well.

We hope to have more progress to report on later this week!