Water, Shelter, Electricity

The garage is turning out to be a huge blessing.  We wonder what we did before we had it.  Now we are able to get out of the cold wind to work on a few projects, but it's hard to accomplish much here with the cold wind.

The recent bitter cold has shattered the pipes in the pump house so we've got the pump shut off for now.  We're going to have to get someone here to help us.  The wiring in the pump house is shoddy and with all of the trash left in there (old heaters, empty clorox bottles, misc trash) I'm not comfortable with Alan crawling around.

The guy from CREC hooking up the electric was funny, though.  He looked in there and said, "ah it's just 220".  But he also agreed that the wiring needed to be redone.   He thought Alan could do it.

Up at the other pole, which is closer to the new garage, I wanted an outlet so we could start to use other equipment.  It's kind of hard to work on any improvements (or even just camp for the weekend) without a place to plug in.

I called Bob Foster at Foster Electric, Heat, and Air in Chandler, OK.  What a great guy.  He came out and hooked up exactly what we needed and let us do most of the transaction through email.

Bob had some advice about our construction plans when I mentioned building a walk out basement.  He said he's seen too many leaky basements in Lincoln County because of the red clay.   I am a little disappointed to hear that since I'm set on having a walk out basement.

We're Selling the Tulsa House

We need to be here all of the time to make any progress.  That's what Alan thinks, and I agree.  Camping is ok, but we barely have time to do anything else but set up and tear down camp.

Can we sell our Tulsa home and start building out here?

Consistent with our decision making, a thought about selling our 4,000 sq. ft. Tulsa house quickly turned into actually selling our Tulsa house.  I've emailed our realtor, Alexis with Coldwell Banker.  Connie, our realtor friend in Oklahoma City said houses were selling but not houses in the middle.  We needed to either deeply discount our house, or fix it up.

We decided to fix the house up.  Walking through the house itemizing projects created an intimidating list.  The house needed to be painted, inside and out.  The bathrooms needed an update, the flooring needed to be replaced in some areas.

Even though we are quite handy, we realized we couldn't do it all ourselves.  Especially since our company was launching a new product which requires a lot of our weekend time.

I bought some great faucets on faucetsdirect.com.  Alan is going to do that work himself.  I've already re-painted the kitchen cabinets and replaced the hardware with brushed nickel pulls.

I claimed ownership of my house on Zillow and began searching for "comps."  Our house is on a 1/2 acre lot with 40+ trees and backing up to a green built.  I needed to know how much it was worth to establish my budget for the improvement.

I searched the BBB for a contractor who had a website.  I hope that having a website means I can contact him via email.  I just don't have the time for telephone calls and doing some business transactions through email is more efficient.

I found Tyler Owsley with Sound Construction, L.L.C.

The Tractor Needs a Home

With the Kubota delivery scheduled, we've turned our attention to a garage to store it in.

We saw several buildings and a sign for "Better Built Barns."  I visited their website and discovered they were in Perkins (only 12 miles away).  We dropped in to look at the models.

We bought the 14x28 with a modification to include a mobile home door with a window to allow light in the building.  Ernest Strubhar is the owner (hope I spelled it correctly) and we worked with Jeremy.  They are wonderful people.  Jeremy is very meticulous and helped us with a lot of decisions including where to purchase gravel for a pad under the building.

We called Kenny Sexton, who lives over in Coyle, OK.  Kenny is also a wonderful person.  He's very helpful and not only took care of our gravel needs, he did some grading down by the pond so we could get across the bridge without charging us.

We're Going to Need a Tractor

Even in winter, standing there, looking at the pasture I had already begun to realize what ALDEN Ranch would look like without cows grazing.

I said "Honey, if you want to keep camping out here, we're going to need a tractor for mowing."  Well, it was either that or hiring someone.  And if you think for a second Alan was going to miss an opportunity to operate a big machine, then you don't know him at all.

After talking to a few of our experienced friends, we settled on the Kubota tractor.  We were told it was a "working man's tractor."

We bought the tractor from the nice people at Payne County Implement Company on Perkins Road near Stillwater.  They were easy to deal with and also very helpful.  They pointed out that if we planned to work the ranch as an agricultural business that we needed to get our tax exempt number before purchasing the tractor.

Steph is a natural farm hand.  I love watching her drive the tractor.  She can use the front loader better than most!