Sanctuary Ridge Adventures in Farming

Bulldozers and Lasers

With no buildings to store our farm equipment, it’s time to start some construction!

Jamey and I have spent hours planning, staking, measuring, and finally decided on a solid plan for our first farm barns. One will be an equipment barn, one will be an outdoor pavilion and the final barn site is for a proposed wedding venue. The build sites all need to be leveled in preparation for the buildings. Since we have to rent the bulldozer, we wanted to get as much preparation completed as we could. Our retired construction company “Legacy Construction, LLC” gave us the experience we need to plan and manage the build. Although we always decided the best location for our home construction by measuring and laying out the site based on the legal setbacks, we never did the site leveling or foundation preparation ourselves.

Jamey’s expertise in these things always amazes me! On our mission trip to Belize last May, we needed someone to install a septic system. No one with the expertise needed was able to go. So Jamey asked questions, read about it, watched videos, and studied how to install a septic system. In addition to planning the work for the mission team members and creating material lists, he spent the majority of the trip in the grueling heat/sun installing the needed septic system. When we returned in November, he installed the second system for the Mission House at Dream Central Belize. Sometimes you don’t have to be an expert, you just need to be willing to be used by God and willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done!

Once again, Jamey has studied to prepare for something new: building site prep via bulldozer.

Even with all the planning, we ended up changing some of our plans. After the first day of working with the Dozer, the machine developed a massive hydraulic leak. The rental company had to come get it to do the repair and bring it back to us almost two weeks later. During those two weeks, we re-evaluated our plans for some “RV sites”. A new plan was developed to allow us to make the RV sites multipurpose. We will be able to use those for parking or outdoor seating. We also redesigned the RV “carport” to a pavilion that will have the same heavy timber design as the wedding venue. It too will serve multiple purposes. We are excited to see these designs come to life now!

The Laser Transit

Jamey became a pro on the dozer and I learned to run the transit!

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