The Build- June 2021

Building a house takes a lot of time… sprinkle in running your own business, Josh working over time at Altec and managing a homestead. We had no time to do any updates.

But that's not to say we didn't take photos to remind ourselves of all our progress along the way. It's been a year since our last blog update. When we left off last we were in the initial stages of clearing the plot for the house and foundation digging. Sam was running Naturally Wild Taxidermy from Gary (her father's) shop in Queensbury. It was very much appreciated since we were continuing to live in what would become the shop on our property. Sam was quite spoiled with hot lunches provided by her mother (Donna; aka Saint Donna). We had a goal to open Naturally Wild Taxidermy in North Creek by September. Three months from now.

We day dreamed about soon having a field of grass and watching our critters forage for food but for now it was mud, dirt, and not very pleasing to the eye. There were several large rock piles left behind from where the last property owner thought of building a house. We had an attack on our meat birds from a mink that lived in one of these boulder piles. That was the day that pile got moved, and the mink collected for garment tanning. At the end of the day we we would pour ourselves a drink and take the side by side out to drag the field. We continued tackling the field and managed to get all of the remaining boulders and rock piles from the previous owner moved. This took several days but well worth it once we got our western town chicken and turkey house to its permanent location. We put the boulders to good use by building a retaining wall for our walk out basement as well as back yard.

We were very anxious to get the house built and also on quite a deadline. As soon as hunting season started Sam would be even more busy at the shop and not dependable to work on building the house.

It was neat to start figuring out the lay of the property, the schedule of the deer, and see the bears on camera. Apparently the critters were figuring us out as well. On June 10th we had a bear check out our progress on the driveway; he approved.

June 11th we installed a pitless adapter on the well. The previous owner installed a well and had a hose above ground running to the camp. This was great for a weekend hunting camp but not suitable for a year round residence and business. We dug a trench and moved the pipe in ground and up through the floor of the camp. On June 26th we continued the driveway from the shop to the location of the house. Sam ran the tractor and Josh ran rented excavators. We had loads of stone brought in to harden the road. We installed culverts to eliminate the washouts from the sloped property. June 23 Josh dug the frost wall for walkout basement and he and his dad formed footings. June 30th Josh and his dad poured footings for foundation. The dream of having a house built was starting to come to fruition!