Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[Pastor Dave]

@Mike CHS , I have went back and read your thread to the point of its current status. Sounds really good. As I did some genealogy research, I noticed entire families moving from East to West as the country opened up in the 1800's. Folks that had worked hard and wanted to be pioneers in their 60's and 70's moving West and cutting trees and clearing land, building homes, digging wells and all that went into it. Some of the adult children with families stayed close and others ventured further West. But, enough of a look into the past. I love the idea of getting back to the land and becoming as self sufficient as possible. What you and wife are doing is a big inspiration, and I look forward to being able to do something similar in abt 20 years or sooner if fortunate enough. Keep up the blog thread because I enjoy seeing the progress.

 

[Mike CHS]

Thank you Pastor Dave. Our project has been a labor of love only made better by the Lady I'm doing it with. We will miss being away from family but it's only a day trip from them.

 

[Mike CHS]

We packed up my workshop on Thursday and headed to Tennessee on Friday. We got home just a little bit after dark and Mikey didn't take into account the weight on the drive wheel of the 26' U-Haul truck so I immediately got stuck. I tried with little Kubota but I think I heard the truck laughing at me as it just sat there. Luckily I have good neighbors and both of them came down with another tractor. The neighbor hooked up to the front to pull and I used the hitch with my front end loader to push. We needed to get it turned around anyway so once we got it moving we just ran it out into the yard a bit.
Neighbors helped unload on Saturday and we headed back Sunday.

We will get another truck tomorrow and load up the lumber for another run on Thursday. Rough estimate is a little over 5,000 pounds of lumber so we will have a little weight limit left to take some of the household goods. I didn't take any shop pics but will once everything is set up and running. Did manage to get rid of most of the boxed items and used the tractor to push over a half dozen willow trees because they had several days of rain and I needed the ground as wet as possible to be able to dig/push them over.

 

[Pastor Dave]

Always awesome to have good neighbors WITH equipment. Once you are settled, and ground is firm this summer/early Fall, do a hog pit-barbecue style and invite all the neighbors. Big party, you're thanking everyone for the help, and you are now an established neighbor. In the very least you get to eat good!

 

[Baymule]

Ain't moving FUN????? Good neighbors are worth their weight in gold.

 

[Mike CHS]

We are already planning a BBQ for everyone around once we get moved in including the realtor. We got another U-Haul last weekend and hauled all of our lumber. We loaded up Thursday again and drove to Tennessee on Friday. The load of lumber was over 5000 lbs and by the time we got done, one little piece of oak felt like a slab.

We thought about selling the lumber in SC to make it easier but there is a lot of exotics that would cost a fortune to replace so it was money well spent.

Teresa got her car tag and drivers license converted to Tennessee so she is the 1st of us to "Officially" become a state resident. I was surprised how much cheaper it was there than in South Carolina.

 

[Baymule]

Haha, I can so relate to hauling loads of lumber and other stuff. We hauled a load of telephone poles and they were so heavy we drove about 50 MPH all the way. They are now holding up the barn.

 

[Mike CHS]

I'm glad there is a place to post things about trivial events that would mean nothing somewhere else.

We think a bird or something got in the building while we had the big door open since something blurry keeps flitting around in front of the security cameras and setting off email alerts.

 

[Baymule]

Isn't that the truth? Anywhere else you'd be considered an idiot for filling up the garage with used lumber that you pulled the nails out of against that day that you actually use it. We have a really nice 36'x36' barn now and it killed me to have to go buy new 20'x2"x6" for barn rafters. Only 19 of them though, we used the used ones first. We did use all new tin for the roof and sides, I will use my used tin elsewhere (and have used it for other projects).

 

[Latestarter]

You've got a point Mike... Since I'm by myself, I sometimes have things I want to "share" and nobody here to share with. Of course the dogs are always interested in anything I have to share with them, but they just haven't got the proper "feed back" thing down yet I sometimes don't think they really care about the subject matter, they don't care about the words, they just like the up close and personal attention accompanied by my voice.