A new project...

We built a new fence last month.  Of course, it really wasn't that simple...nothing we do is simple around here. ;)  There were two giant trees along the fence line that were pushing the fence over.  They needed to go before the new fence could go up.  Joel (with a little bit of help from me) took down both trees in one evening...without taking down one of the power lines or hitting the houses...which was quite the feat!  He climbed up a giant ladder and tethered the tree with a long rope.  Then I stood holding the line tight while pulling in the direction we wanted it to go.  It was nerve wrecking to say the least. 

Success! We laid them down right in between the two houses...without breaking anything.  Wahoo!  Two trees downed meant we had two giant tree stumps to pull out.  The night before and the day of the fence building, our friend Chad signed his life over to help us...with all of his big boy toys.  A big truck, auger, laser levels, and various other handy things like a trailer and full size tractor. (!)  We ran into a little hiccup the night before we built the fence.  The guys were trying to pull out the tree stump that had grown right at the corner of our cement pad.  They had pulled out the other stump and old fence posts with the truck...so they tried that with this one too...good idea in theory, unless you are the Hallbergs. :)  The final pull (at about 10pm) that should have uprooted the stump, ended up uprooting our neighbors cement pad...the entire thing was at a 45 degree angle with the stump wedged underneath it.  My camera decided to die at that moment...so we only have cell phone pics of it...but trust me, it was laughable.  They went and got a tractor...like 'farmer brown style', for reals...and tried to put the cement pad back with that. Unfortunately, a 10'x10' cement pad doesn't like to cooperate when you're trying hard not to break it...so they didn't get it back perfectly.  It sticks out about 3 inches over the fence line...still not sure how to get it back in place.  Any ideas???    

At any rate, they just moved on.  No sense crying over spilled milk cement, right?  That's the cement pad behind the guys.  *sigh*  They spent all of the next day installing the new fence as far as they could.

Our neighbor Alex jumped in while he was home from work to help.  He helped put up all of the horizontal stringers.  From there, it was smooth sailing...finally!   Now we just need to do some clean up...and finish the portion where we had the troubles.  There is never a dull moment around here, for sure.  :)