Oh what fun it is to demolish and tear up things with a big tractor. I was going to rent a much smaller backhoe, but it was broken and they convinced me to rent a large John Deere 310. They said it was an $80,000 tractor. The rental place is about 3 miles from the house, so I drove it home during rush hour through town one night and returned it the next night. During the 24 hours we rented it we took out 20 fence posts with concrete (see above) with ease and 12 tree stumps and leveled the land before we till the land in August. Oh……I forgot to mention that I also hit a yellow jacket’s nest. They live in the ground in case you didn’t know. I ended up with about 10 bee stings. Funny thing was I took a benadryl right after it happened……should not have operated heavy equipment after, but it all worked out in the end.

As you can see from the pictures below, the landscape has changed a lot from when we moved in outside the family room. We had grass, trees, bushes and a fence. Now it is empty, but will soon be filled with a vineyard.