Raven's Roost

[Chad]

Coming along nicely! And like others have said beautiful scenery and temps make tackling this work more appealing. Looking forward to when the bunkie is there!

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[Harry]

Big projects come from big dreamers. If you want to get something done ask a busy person. Your both a dreamer and a busy person. Your on the way to greatness. Don’t look back your going to succeed. Harry

[JSinMO]

Looks like a nice spot for your cabin. I’m looking forward to the build. It kinda reminds me of the Sears homes you could order. Pick the one you want and they would freight it to you pre cut ready to build!

[DavidBarkey]

Shallow roots is common up north , especially with ever greens . There are many broad leaf trees up there that grow fast and fall down faster with out notice , ei white birch ((paper birch) . Having the trees cut back or topped of so that no tree is able to hit buildings when not if it comes down . It is the way of the woods up there . Be wary of widow makers when walking the woods as well , especially in the spring . Beautiful spot , living in harmony with nature comes from understanding it .

[Toolslinger]

Looks like a great spot to retire.
My place is also all rocks, with a thin skin of dirt all through the woods. When we've seen blowdown, it's always amazing to see just how wide the root base is, and how many of those rocks it has wrapped up. The trees are pretty much sitting there like potted plants. The oaks are a different story of course.

I'm curious how heavy is the ramp on your shed? Obviously it's working, but just from the photo, it looks like it'd be a bear to handle.

[RoamingGnome]

Thanks for the comments everyone! Now that the weather is feeling more like winter I'm sure I'll have a bit of time available to share some of the adventures we've had while trying to build our "dream" retirement home up north.

@JSinMO the Bunkie https://bunkielife.com/is sold as a kit with everything included except for the base/foundation and the roof covering (we are going to go steel roof) The walls are pre-cut and notched and go together like a Lincoln Log kit for grownups... Or that's the plan anyway...

@Toolslinger the ramp for the chipper shed looks sturdy in the photos but it's actually made from PT fence boards with just enough reinforcing that it won't snap under my weight. It's a little heavy to close, but no worse than trying to stand a sheet of 3/4" plywood on edge. I'm quite pleased with how it has worked out, It's been through 2 winters and doesn't look any worse for the wear. It's a little less cluttered now as I've moved the chainsaw and weed whacker to the "garage" shipping container

[RoamingGnome]

Update time... lots of little changes and adventures up at the 'Roost in the last few months. Thought I would share a few highlights

For the last couple of years had been using an 8x10 plastic shed as a temporary structure to "camp" up at the 'Roost while we figured out exactly what we were going to do with the property (hint: we still haven't decided )

It was cozy inside, just enough room for a Queen size mattress and a small table and chairs.

I also made a wooden screen door for a little extra ventilation in the hot summer months

Unfortunately this spring we discovered carpenter ants had set up house over the winter...
- It was time to look for something a little more comfortable -

I found an older (1984) camper trailer on FB marketplace, it looked pretty good, it was close by and the owners agreed to deliver it to our property.

We spoke to neighbour Glen and he offered to let us set up a temporary camp so we could prepare a proper pad for the trailer on top of the hill - in the clearing where we want to build our house and garage.

"Clean up" day presented a few surprises - but overall the level of creature comforts has gone up exponentially...

One of the big surprises was finding evidence Deer mice had enjoyed living in the trailer at some point... we didn't look in the storage cubby under the rear dinette seat (it was full of junk when we looked at it originally) lifting the cushion to vacuum everywhere we found a 3'x4' area full of old acorn shells 2" deep
and worse - they had nibbled on some of the wiring

On the downside I have added to my ever growing list of projects and things to do... on the Plus side - It's functional as it sits, with a very comfortable bed and a real kitchen and dining table.

[MattA]

Looks like fun. You can easily fix those wires with some Wago 221 inline splicing connectors. Wago has larger ones if needed. If you need help, let me know.
https://www.amazon.com/221-2401-WAGO-Le ... 431&sr=8-5

[RoamingGnome]

I didn't spend a lot of time at the property this spring so the weeds started growing like... well... weeds

Did a couple of trips up to weed whack and try to find the driveway that was threatening to disappear in a jungle of green.

and the mosquitoes and deerflies were hungry and looking for company.

When the trailer arrived we decided to clear a place for it up top.

Made a 10x20 wood form and placed it in the opening between the garage and house locations...

Levelled out the form and started filling it with loose rocks and gravel from around the clearing...

The last couple of days I did a crazy amount of driving ~ going from home to @Eugen on to the 'Roost and then return home the next day so I could return the U-Haul trailer before the 2 day rental was finished - it was a total of 1200 kms / 745 miles in 36 hours)

We started the odyssey on Wednesday when we went to visit @Eugen and buy our 2nd 644 loader from his collection
(I'm going to combine the best bits of both, then fix up the 2nd one and put it up for sale - can't be greedy and one 644 loader should be enough for me )

Thursday (yesterday) was spent moving trailer loads of pit run gravel from the bottom of the property up to the trailer pad.
(Neighbour Glen to the rescue again, he loaded up my utility trailer with a bucket of gravel from his big farm tractor - one bucket was enough to settle the trailer on to it's overload springs.)

It's not a self tilting or dumping trailer, but I thought if I moved enough of the load behind the centre of gravity I could lift up on the tongue and let the load slide out.

it worked (sort of) - there are clearance issues with the license plate when it tips like that and I also made it too hard to completely remove the tailgate when dumping. So you end up having to shovel the gravel off the tailgate before you can move the trailer again,,,

I finished off the day with a 3rd partial trailer load that I shovelled in by hand (a lot more effort than I would like to repeat again soon - )
- One or two more loads of the pit run gravel and I should be ready to add the top layer of 3/4" crusher run and then run a compactor over it...

...to be continued

[RoamingGnome]

Looks like fun. You can easily fix those wires with some Wago 221 inline splicing connectors. Wago has larger ones if needed. If you need help, let me know.
https://www.amazon.com/221-2401-WAGO-Le ... 431&sr=8-5

Thanks @MattA those could be a useful thing to have around, the chewed wires are the low voltage (12v) wires for lighting etc...
I was intending on either replacing short runs or doing a conventional repair using automotive style heat shrink butt connectors.

Have you seen these before - https://www.amazon.ca/Burndy-BISR1-Unit ... B00CBK6L2S

I have a handful of them in my collection - left over from working as a mechanic and repairing magnet cables on scrap cranes - they are good for splicing wires anywhere from #14-1/0 AWG