During the week we received the quotes from the various driveway contractors. As was expected, the quotes varied quite significantly between all five firms. We have yet to decide which one we will go with, although one seems to be a clear favourite at this stage. Watch this space. We have one more contractor to hear back from, as we only got him out yesterday to have a look.
Chris spent all day out at the block yesterday. I desperately needed to stay home and give the house a good clean as we've been away a bit lately and it was looking a bit neglected. And there wasn't really all that much for me to do out there. Chris on the other hand was a busy bee. He got quite a bit more trenching done, taking the trench for power, water and phone over to the shed site. He also put in some electrical conduit under where the driveway is going and filled the trench back in so we can get vehicles into the block (and more importantly, cattle out!).
Trenching out towards shed site
Chris inspecting his handiwork
Conduit in the trench and hole filled in
Once the trenching was finished, Chris took down an old fence and pulled the posts out with the digger. Next in his sights were the cattle yards. We are going to salvage the loading race and move it to a more convenient location but remove the rest of the yards as they have definitely seen better days. The digger was doing a great job until a hose got caught on the rails and burst. Oops. So that was that. All in all a very productive day.
The digger and the half-demolished cattle yards
Houston, we have a problem...
View of paddock with internal fence removed
Today we both went out to the block as "many hands make light work". With the digger still out of action until Chris can get a new hose, we turned our attention to weed and grass control. It was my very first time with a whipper-snipper and I learnt really quickly to keep my mouth shut as flying bits of grass and weeds don't taste very good! I had the normal whipper-snipper and it was my job to do under the post & rail fence-lines so we can spray the grass to keep it clear of the fence. Chris had the big whipper-snipper with a slasher blade on it and he dealt to the base of the barbary hedge. I finished before Chris as grass is much easier than hedge so I went on a thistle destroying mission. There are a couple of patches that I dealt to but then I ran out of whipper-snipper cord. Nevertheless it was very satisfying seeing thistles lying toes up in the paddock! Chris managed to finish spraying along where he'd been slashing the hedge weeds just as the spray ran out. Great timing!
Me with the whipper-snipper - what a great invention!
Close-up of me covered in plant goop
My handiwork
Chris the weedsprayer
In other news, we received a draft set of cottage plans back from Alena Homes' draughtsman. He had a couple of really good ideas for maximising space, but we want to tweak the bathroom and kitchen layout as we don't think it works particularly well as it is. Our good friends who are in the know are going to take a look and give us their expert opinion. Once we've decided on a layout which works best we can send the plans back for a re-draw.
Chris in the nicest stip of pasture on the whole place
Maybe one day it will all look like this?
Because at the moment most of it looks like this...
(and that's after the cattle have been through)
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