PREPARING FOR POWER

This took a lot of thinking and a lot of debate.

Honestly, originally we were thinking offgrid. For a lot of reasons, that seemed like a very good idea. However, for a variety of reasons we are deciding to get power to our property, and we have been getting prepared lately.

WHY ON GRID?

For one, the initial cost of going solar is more than we are able to swing at this moment. It seemed like a small monthly bill would be easier to fit into our finances than one large lump sum front, but that is not the only reason. Our neighbors Hive account@jaguarlife and Hive account@ladyjag are also building a house right now, and they are going on grid. However, to run a line all the way to their house would have cost them thousands of dollars extra, because only so many feet and poles are provided for free from the power company. By us also getting power at the same time, we have twice the distance and twice the poles to work with, which saves them thousands of dollars.

MANY HELPERS AND LOTS OF EQUIPMENT

Assembling the pole took a bit of work, so even Monster Truck the Pepper pitched in. Once all that parts were hooked up, all that was left was to erect it in place.

To get things started we used a skid steer with a trenching attachment. This is basically a giant chainsaw looking thing that can cut through earth, roots, clay and rocks. Since we were going in to the earth four feet anyway, we figured that this would be a good start.

Nest came the auger, which is also a beast of a machine. @Bluerthangreen and I purchased this attachment for his skid steer last year, because it'll come in handy for everything from digging fence post holes to planting trees.

It definitely got the job done and dug the hole deep enough for this project. I cannot imagine the time and effort that it would take doing this by hand.

@Bluerthangreen and I put the pole in its hole and began to fill in the soil around it. Unfortunately his spade shovel had previously went "flying off the handle," but he still got the job started.

Just to make sure that they played a part, I sent my Hive account@little-peppers in to finish the job. As usually, they worked thier little tails off and did a good job with their portion of the work. We are moving forward bit by bit, and are hoping to begin building in March, but we will see!