This picture is from Monday July 23.

We were busy over the weekend and couldn't get up to the land (it was pouring rain most of the time anyway) so when Monday came, we were excited to get up to Belfast and see what had been going on.

We were AMAZED! The fellow doing the site work, Derek, is almost 30 and is a really friendly person. Not only that, he takes his work seriously and gets it done fast. He's gotten the rough driveway in, and left up every tree that we tagged as wanting to remain. The foundation hole is excavated and smoothed out, and yesterday he told us that the footings were poured yesterday. The stumps are all removed from the area, much of the levelling work is done, and he used his excavator to push our four piles of brush into two piles, one in the back and one in the front. We won't burn it till winter time when burn piles are allowed again.

The stumps are all buried neatly away, just where we wanted them to go. And the site for the septic field is cleared out as well! We talked to Roy, our GC, last night, and he told us that Derek wanted to start the septic field today! We also met Derek's 13 year old cousin, Jordan, who is well spoken and friendly, and is helping out with the job. He splits his summers between helping with the excavation business and helping other uncles with a 600 acre dairy farm. Pretty impressive young man. He reports that he enjoys the dairying work most of all, and would like to carry on with it, which really made us happy to hear. It's nice to hear about family farms being passed down and preserved, and the work being enjoyed. Not everyone wants to get out of farming, though the work is probably hard and the $$ not guaranteed. :-)

We're headed up to the Belfast area on Saturday so we can see the walls poured into place for the basement, and check and see how the septic field looks. It's been wonderfully encouraging to be fortunate enough to be working with people that get their work done so quickly and so wonderfully! We'll add some more pics that we took of the site work, and have more coming along soon.

Once the basement walls are in and have cured a bit our job will to be to apply the waterproofing material, called Dry-Lock (or some mis-spelling of the word) to the walls, inside and out, and then once the curing process is done, we'll be ready to build, which seems almost inconceivable! But pleasantly so.

We've got A LOT to do before winter! :-)