Editorial
BIG things happening here at Wallaby Ridge, most notably some tree felling and earth moving but also the property is about to become dual occupancy.
I know I prefer to do everything myself, and normally I do. But the jobs I need doing now are way above my pay grade, so much as it kills me I have to bite the bullet and pay some professionals.
Till next time then, and remember,
Don't Dream it, Be it!
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Sun 16 Oct 2023
Let's start with the tree felling.
9AM the tree fellas (well there's only two of them) arrive and set their gear up.
The first tree to go is #1 from the photos I posted in the last issue. This is the most difficult because I built part of the workshop around it, as such it has to be dropped one piece at a time and the pieces slowly roped down.
This was done many times as the guy worked his way up the tree. Here he is rigging up the final limb.
And here's a squence of that limb falling.
It gets hung up in another tree but his mate in the cherry picker frees it.
After that he transfers to the cherry picker and takes down the trunk of the tree in small managable rounds that he can drop from the platform one at at a time. I ask him to get it down to 5-6 feet from the roof and I'll do the rest later, but he leaves it about 10 feet higher so I don't actually know how I will deal with it. No matter, I'll think of something.
That was the hard one, they then move onto tree #2 and dispatch that in no time.
Note the pile of wood and branches in the upper center of the photo, that's the entire tree #1.
Tree #3 is next but I don't have any photos of that. And finally tree #4, the huge dead one that is actually part of the Zen garden.
It comes down with a heck of a wallup and as predicted takes out a few other smaller trees.
My first inclination is to dice this one up for firewood as I will do with the others. But on seeing it I think I like it and will just let it stay there.
I will clean up the ends but that's about all I reckon.
The decision is confirmed by the local wildlife, they like it as well.
Here we see how close it was, it was actually part of the Zen garden.
I also had ideas of removing the stump but that would be a lot of work and, like the tree itself, I don't mind it being there. So it will also stay.
Note the covering of rocks, that's an attempt to stop the turkeys digging up every plant we put in there. It works but is not a great solution visually, so we have plans to up the anti in our battle with the birds.
So how much did all this cost? Well remember that I sold the quad the other day. I got $3500 for that and by coincidence that's exactly how much today's tree felling costs.
Sun 22 Oct 2023
When your turkeys are infantry.
Awww, who's a pretty boy then?
I love the turkeys but these photos kind of show why they are a pain.
The texture behind him in the third photo is the tree stump, therefore he is standing in the Zen garden and they are so destructive that it makes it all but impossible to have a nice garden there. There is a solution, and it will be a lot of work, but I will do it before long.
Tue 24 Oct 2023
Speaking of work, it's time to get back onto some construction and this is a red-letter day, the first roofing sheet goes up.
Yeah I know, it's not much of a sheet, but it's a start.
Wed 25 Oct 2023
I have three identical freezers and two of them are full of meat. Geri hardly eats meat of any kind and certainly no red meat, and to be honest I don't eat that much either. Never have really although I do love dishes like lasagne etc. But I'll never cook such a meal and neither will Geri, so I decide to sell two of the freezers.
This will also slightly reduce our dependance on such technology, it was always a worry that if we go away and the power fails we would lose 1000s of dollars worth of food. Not so much if I'm not storing meat in two large freezers.
Tue 31 Oct 2023
More roofing has been done.
And I do some work on the loft area.
The loft is really just a small mezzanine floor that seems like a quirky idea to utilize some of the wasted volume created by such a high ceiling.
I started by adding an extra post, and as the 3x3" steel I use comes in 8-meter lengths I figured that I'll just set an entire lenght in the ground then cut it off at the correct height when I know what that is.
But at beer oclock, while pondering the day's work, I get a brilliant idea. More about that later.
Fri 03 Nov 2023
The next big thing happening around here is earthworks and more tree felling.
There are still a lot of trees that are too close to the house, plus we have ideas for more construction and two more water tanks, all of which require some flat and cleared ground.
These three photos show the areas concerned. All the trees shown here have to go and the ground levelled.
This is obviously too much for me to do by hand, so I've engaged Dave, the husband of a friend, to do this with his 14-tonne digger.
14 tonnes is not that large for a digger but it's well up to the job and will be able to work in the tighter areas.
He starts work on the area near the Zen garden that will become a food forest, possibly even fully enclosed in bird netting to stop the critters from eating all the fruit before we do.
The dirt removed from this area is used to build up the driveway a bit.
Then he moves around to the workshop side of the house. This area had some quite large trees and it is even rockier than the other side.
I could have got the arborists to do these trees the other day but I also need the stumps removed and all up that would have cost me another fortune. Whereas Dave can push them over in minutes, stump and all, and carry them off site.
Have a look at the hole left when that tree was removed.
Not that big eh? Considering the size of the tree that's not a very large hole at all and that's one problem with gum trees, they have shallow root systems and they can easily fall in a strong wind. In fact the largest one here toppled with barely a nudge from the digger.
This, and the fact that gum trees regularly drop widow makers, was a major factor in me deciding to have most of them removed. I don't like to hurt any living thing, but if some thing, anything, is perceived as a danger or potential danger to me or mine it has to go.
The next job is to dig out from part of the workshop to create a flat area for my blacksmithing tools. This space used to be a car port for the Jimny but that's long gone now, and I think it will make a good smithy.
I was going to do this by hand, but Dave did 95% of it in minutes. He can't get too close to the sides though as one slip would mean a rebuild, so I'll finish it off later.
Now it's the turn of the area in front of the workshop entrance.
I have plans for this area that range from a simple car port to a 12-meter workshop extension. Time will tell what actually happens here.
And finally another pad, for either a carport or more workshop extension.
See that tree right close to the workshop? We can't push that for two reasons, Firstly there's a chance that the root ball will come up under my wall and destroy it. And secondly he can't get behind it to push, and of course he doesn't want to pull the tree. So that one one have to be dealt with another day.
As he walks the machine back out to his truck I get him to push over a huge tree.
This is about 100 meters from my house so it's no threat to me, but in a few months there will be a second house here and this tree would be a clear and present danger to it.
So why another house? A friend of ours is moving onto the block and she plans to put a transportable house and a garage here.
All done, Dave loads the digger onto his float, we chat for a while and he heads off.
Now let's review the work.
These two photos are of the proposed food garden area.
This pad will be for two water tanks.
Same space but from the other side, a new garage will be going here, next to the water tanks.
The finished smithy space.
And finaly the entrance to the workshop.
As mentioned there will be some combination of workshop extension and/or a carport here. Probably both I think, at this point I'm not sure exactly what will go here but if I have flat ground to work with I have more options.
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