Ground breaking of sorts

Bull dozer work in preparation for the house building and homesteading began yesterday up at my place. I say "bull dozing" loosely because the clearing of yesterday was in fact executed by a two toned purple track hoe. The task begun was clearing about an acre of hemlocks. "LC" and his son "JC" cleared and burned over half of the lot yesterday, in the heat, with me looking on and trying to help.






***Note (Let me explain the burning. I (and friendly helpers) have already gone through the grove and selectively cut and stacked all the trees with sizable logs for future construction of an outbuilding. I have also already stacked quite a bit of hemlock wood for future bonfires. It is also likely that in the near future I will be doing a day of chipping of some of the hemlocks. I decided to go ahead and burn the day's clearing to just get rid of it and keep the site clean for the next few weeks of work. It was not a perfect option, but I feel a reasonable compromise for efficiency of upcoming work.)

But back to the track hoe work. I was pretty nervous about it, being a decision that could not be undone and being an act of destruction and all. I am quite confident in the dozer man, "LC," but I was still edgy about the whole of it. I called Mom and told her she should come out and see me (which she did for a few minutes in the early afternoon with Dad), and I made a call up to the Mechos to say that one of the females of the house should come up just so I wasn't the only girl on the scene. I just wanted the moral support I guess. Well, it was a hot day and nobody wanted to be out there in the sun with a massive burn pile going, but God bless Mom and Dad and God bless Bean, who walked up late in the afternoon for some good old fashioned girl time with the big Dane (that's me). Bean had just dyed her hair extra purple and was sporting a darling purple dress to go with it. I made her get up on the track hoe for a most fantastic and sneaky feeling photo shoot (which she seemed to thoroughly enjoy too, once she surrendered to the idea).







After that we hung out up there for a good while, chewing the fat and laughing and carrying on. We were discussing favorite colors- Bean's is (big surprise) purple, and I was looking around to find an appropriately salmon colored item to demonstrate my favorite color, when I spotted a lovely orange mushroom, which Bean identifyed as chicken of the woods. God bless 14 year olds who help me with mushroom ID. I ate it for dinner tonight. It tasted like chicken. It is not quite my favorite color but almost.