A few months ago, after months and months of undisturbed property boundaries, someone actually drove a side-by-side all the way down our recently dug driveway, from the back clearing down to the road where we were there mowing. It shocked us, and we stopped the couple and told them they were on private land. They admitted to being guests at the neighboring property, so we figured they just didn’t know the boundaries. Well, last week when we drove out to see the property, we noticed that there were tracks leading from our neighbor’s property onto ours, and they continued on into our woods. After seeing tracks again, we decided to go next door to see what was up. No one answered our knocks, but the next day, while Darren was there mowing again, the neighbor came down and he and Darren spent 30+ minutes chatting. They discussed boundaries, and he admitted to coming over on his 4-wheeler. He said he had seen an object on our property and wanted to check it out — it happened to be a chair that our youngest left there after a night of stargazing. There really was no reason for him to go any further, but he admitted he did. He apologized, and said he’d make sure no one from his land crossed over into ours. In fact, he said he’d put up a barrier to keep that from happening, and he did that today. For sure, no one will cross that in a vehicle! And I would say that his runway is now defunct (unless he can fly over the top of this!). We really didn’t need something this elaborate, but it definitely will do the trick.

We spent the day burning and marking trees for cutting down this winter. I didn’t get any pictures, but I did get one video (sorry, I can’t upload it here). We found another nest of ground hornets, after keeping our distance most of the afternoon, I took some video to find the entrance to the nest. Eventually we’ll have to get rid of them because they’re too close to where we plan to build.

Now that the driveway is mostly drive-able, we figured it was time to actually have an entrance from the road onto our land that didn’t involve needing a 4WD vehicle every time. The county highway department came out and approved our location, and even said they’d install it for us for material cost only. Oh yeah! When we were there over the weekend we saw the paint from the “dial before you dig” calls, so we figured they’d get this done soon. So we headed out tonight, and there it is! 30 ft culvert pipe, 15″ in diameter, and a nice ditch heading down to where the pipe goes under the road for drainage. It drives nice and smooth, too! We’ll have to finish graveling it at some point, but since there’s still work to do on the driveway itself, that’ll have to wait.

It’s been awhile since we put in a long work day on Brown Hill Road, but the sun was shining, we had nothing else pressing, and the temps were excellent. Darren headed out while I got groceries, then I met him out there. He had a fire going already, burning off some debris we’d left piled up on the home site. A couple of days ago, we staked out a new possible location for the house — I wasn’t thrilled with the last place we had it staked out, because the views weren’t going to be what I wanted. So we actually turned the entire thing about 90°, and moved it more into the center of the site. Not sure if it’ll end up being there — we’ve moved it at least 3 times already!

After that, we started working on a new section of a path we want that will go from the house site back to the road where it turns to go to the clearing. The driveway at the house site is steep and when you down get to the logging road, it’s impossible to turn to head to the back. Also, coming from the back heading back to the house site, we’d like to not have to make that sharp turn either. We’re pretty sure that there were paths all over the place on this property so we used a section that looks like it was once a path. We cut out saplings, vines, cut up fallen trees, and use the weed-eaters to clear it and now we have a path that will work for what we want. It’s awesome to have property where we can just create paths and trails and make what we want! After that was done, we pulled out the tripod stand and cooked some dinner.

It’s summer, and usually that means hot humid dry days from July through early September. However, this year we’ve had heat waves that were short, weeks of rain, and weeks of such low humidity I could almost think we were in the mountains. This odd weather means we are mowing weekly at home, and almost every other week on Brown Hill Road. With really not a lot we can do out there right now (and a lot going on at home) we haven’t been there that often. A mowing day was necessary, though, so we headed over with 2 weed-eaters, our mower, ice water and lunch to get the property in shape. Our daughter joined us there to help out — more hands make faster work! Everything was trimmed up — all the cleared area at the bottom of the hill was mowed, the edges along the road was hit with the weed-eaters, and we even mowed the old logging road past our driveway in the back, as well as the clearing at the back of the property. Perfect day to get everything done, and we finished it up with a fire that evening. Oh, found some puffball mushrooms on the clearing — I put my foot next to them for size reference. They were huge! But also disgusting looking and I’m only “pretty sure” they’re puffballs so I left them for other scavengers.

It was hot and humid today, but we hadn’t been working on the property in over 2 weeks so we gathered our gear and headed out to Brown Hill Road. I figured 20 rocks would finish the first section of path that we were rebuilding, and it was close — 16 rocks did the job. We pulled up the last of the old railroad ties and set down the stones all the way to the bottom. It is so much easier to walk up those stone steps, too. I would like to add a rope of some sort as an assistance in climbing but it really isn’t needed. My new Jeep is doing a great job of hauling too — we had her up on top hauling these huge rocks to the bottom. So much easier than carrying them!

I remember awhile ago, seeing an ad in our paper from someone who was selling Brown County rocks. The picture showed a fairly large pile, pieces ranging from 10″ across to 24″ across. They wanted $100 for the pile — would make good foundation pieces, or you could pound them down into much smaller pieces for decoration. It seemed so odd to me that, first, someone would have a pile of rocks that big and would want to sell them, and, second, that someone would want to buy that pile of rocks! But after digging just a few feet down in a very small area of our own Brown County land, I realized rocks in that area are extremely easy to come by. And I am certain we will run out of things to do with all these rocks! But for now, we have decided to replace the old wooden foundation pieces we had been using as steps on our path up the hill with these rocks. Darren went out on Friday and collected the first load in just the first steep section of the driveway, and he and I both picked up more on Saturday. It was too hot to do the entire path, but we did spend an hour or so and placed about 15 steps worth. We will come back over them after the whole path is done with dirt to further stabilize the steps. Also I’m sure you’ll notice that the top step doesn’t seem to lend itself to stepping up on the driveway, but we are going to widen the driveway at that point and we think the gravel will come to where we have the top step set.

After setting the stones, we enjoyed some delicious packet dinners, and watched the sun set on the longest day of the year. Oh, and our transplanted tree is so happy right now! The leaves are full and the tree is spread wide. I’m sure it’s much happier than where it used to be — tucked under a canopy of tulip trees, barely able to see sun at all. We intend to water it 2-4 times a month this summer, giving it plenty of reason to establish good roots.

Last weekend Darren spent most of Friday and Saturday spreading some smaller gravel on top of the large rock we’d put on the driveway a few weeks ago. I helped with the last load and we were able to get to the level part of the driveway after the first hill. So nice that it’s finally dry enough to get up the driveway!

This weekend my daughter and I worked on mowing. She did the cleared area at the base of the hill, and the clearing in the back, and I finally got the mower to the house site! That area of our property probably has never been mowed, so it needs the leaves mulched up so they can blow away and maybe we can get some grass to grow.

We had some general maintenance to do on Brown Hill Road today, and while it felt almost sacrilegious to do any real work with how beautiful the weather was, we just couldn’t take advantage. The driveway is still too wet to use (we did drive up to see, but quickly turned around at the first path and went back down), so we stayed on the bottom and decided to clear across the road. I had trimmed there a couple of weeks ago, but there was one section that has a larger flat area with trees down and lots of low branches that needed to be cleaned up. It took 2-3 hours at most, and we filled our trailer with debris, but it definitely looks better than it did! Oh, and we also had a visitor from Mama Turkey and her brood! Here are the turkeys, our transplanted tree that’s doing so well right now, and the “before” pics:

After pics: