If you read my post from two months ago then you know that my husband and I bought land in the beginning of October. Over the last two months, we have already made a lot of progress! Take a look below at some of what we’ve been working on!

But first, a quick disclaimer: many times in this post (and likely future land and house updates), I am using the marital “we.” “I” have done no chainsawing or heavy lifting of logs, even though “we” have gotten quite a bit of that done. While I have been there for much of the work and progress, there is often very little I can do to help besides provide moral support and take a few pictures. My husband has been doing so much and I am so thankful for him. But yes, “we” are cutting and milling trees in the same way (or maybe the opposite way?) that “we” are pregnant. 🙂

Okay, now onto the progress.

Milled and moved logs at my husband’s family’s. His parents and grandparents had logs in their yards that we were able to use for the house and figure out a good system for. Now all those logs are finished!

Cleared brush and trees. While there are a lot of beautiful trees on the property, there were (and still are) a lot of dead trees and also a lot of brush, bushes, and thorns. We spent a lot of time on several occasions cutting trees and brush to clear out a camping area early on (where we got to camp a couple times before it got cold!) and then to clear a large area for the house and driveway. We had a huge pile of brush we burned, and the logs that aren’t usable for the house were stacked up for firewood.

Built a work table and started on an outhouse. I wasn’t there that day, so I guess these only took my husband and our brothers a little bit to build, but I think these are cool! 🙂 We use the work table for putting all sorts of things on. We currently have a hunting tent that is being used as an outhouse (with a nice composting toilet that they also built) but it will be nice to have a toilet with a better roof sometime.

Cut and Milled some logs on our property. While my husband was trying to finish up the logs at his family’s before doing too much on the property, he did start on a couple logs he cut down at our land! Some of them he hasn’t milled yet, but this one particular log was too big to pull with our truck, so it had to be cut before we could move it with the others!

Moved logs from my husband’s family’s to our property. Since my husband finished all the logs at his family’s, they had to be moved to our property. I was not around for that either, but he took two days to drive back and forth with a trailer and load and unload logs. It took a lot of time and effort on his part, but now everything is at the land!

Marked trees for cutting for the house. While we have quite a good stack of logs already for the house, it will take about 40 more trees to complete the house. We are using mostly white oak, a wood my husband loves working with, and thankfully there is an abundance of it on our property. We walked all over the land marking and measuring the trees that we would like to use for the house. The ones we are using are mostly between 18 and 24 inches in diameter and have 8 to 20 feet of usable log. The “waste” from the trees will be used to make furniture and other cool things and for firewood.

Sold some walnut trees to a logger. We had a logger come and take a look at many of the black walnut trees on our property. He marked 60 of them that he would take, paid us, and also said that any trees we marked for our house, he would get the loggers to pull out for us. We landed a pretty solid deal and are amazed at God’s provision yet again. The loggers buying trees gives us money to continue progress and them pulling out the trees will save weeks (maybe months) of dangerous work.

The loggers will be coming sometime in the next couple weeks to cut down all the marked trees. You’d be surprised, even though they will be cutting over 100 trees, there are so many trees that will be untouched. We left many huge oaks that we would rather just have in the forest as well as smaller oaks and smaller walnuts. There are also a lot of trees that are neither of these species, so those are all staying! Clearing out some of the big trees will let the smaller ones grow up and spread out, which will be healthier for all of them.

I hope you enjoyed getting to see some pictures of our progress on the land! I will have occasional updates as work continues!