03 May Site Clearing

We are so thankful for our good friends who helped us take the first big step into building – tree clearing. As soon as winter started wrapping up in St. Louis, we began planning a “work trip” out to our land with our friends & our families.

We booked a week in mid-April, thinking that surely, the weather would be warm enough and the snow would have been long gone. Watching the weather in Jefferson with eager anticipation, to our dismay, snow storm after snow storm rolled through the area in late March and early April. Then a reprieve. Surely, we thought, the snow would be gone by the time we arrived!

As we pulled up to the land, we saw that yes, the weather was above freezing, but no, the snow on our land had not melted. In fact, there was about 3-5 feet of snow, heavily packed throughout our site.

Not to worry though, we were able to work around the snow, and thanks to much guidance and hard work from our skilled friends, the trees were cleared after 3 intense work days!

The Fire Department did end up showing up twice in those 3 days. The first time to inform us that we needed a burn permit (our neighbors were not pleased with having little pieces of ash fall on their land). And the second time to check in as we had quite a few fires burning and another neighbor had expressed concern.

While the men worked, the women and the kids played and relaxed around the rental cabin. Once the work was done, we were able to make a few trips out to Breckenridge to shop, eat, and explore!

It was amazing to see our land and the surrounding area in this season, as we hadn’t before. Even in mid-April, there was still such a wild-ness about the landscape, an immense beauty with the snow covered mountains. One can imagine that an unprepared person caught in a snow storm would not survive long if they were lost in that part of the world. In fact, our builder told us of just such a story that had happened a couple weeks prior to our trip.

Also on this trip, Nick and I met with our builder, Neil, at the Breckenridge Building Center to look at exterior design options. We had an idea of what we wanted, but it was great to see and discuss it in person. We selected exterior siding, entry doors & windows, decking, and roof.

Neil informed us that the next step would be to bid out all the work to the subcontractors, to see what numbers we come up with.

Now that the trees have been cleared from the building site, it feels much more real that our dreams for this cabin our materializing. Praise Jesus!

More pictures below.