#equipment #purchase #craigslist #climate #visitor
Tag: craigslist (page 6 of 6)
#soil #craigslist #design #fruit
#salvage #plumbing #craigslist #visit
#visit #learning #interesting #garden #craigslist #purchase #design
#permit #repair #purchase #learning #clearing #equipment #craigslist
It’s Sunday night and we are tired. But it is a happy and healthy tired since we got a lot done and did a lot of physical work. One of the things we are hoping is that working on the land will improve our general health. Even Patches our foster dog got tired. We tied her to a tree with an extra long lead whilst we worked away. You can see her enjoying a wheelbarrow ride in the video below.
We started our first Saturday a little later than planned. We got to the land by 10 am since it was going to rain all day. We had purchased a second hand John Deere 160 garden tractor through a Craigslist listing from Smithsburg. It is a small town about 25 minutes from our land. The guy was kind enough to bring it to our land on his flatbed truck. He showed up a little after 10; dropped off the garden tractor and answered a few more of our questions about operations and maintenance. We played around with it for a bit at the lower level of the land and then decided to drive it up the gentle slope to the location of the test house. We wanted to start clearing that area first. As we drove it up; one of the belts fell off. We spent some time trying to figure out how to put it back in and then gave up. We tried reaching the seller to see if he could give us any pointers; but got his voicemail. We then figured out a way to chain the tractor to a tree and cover it up. Since it continued to rain, we decided to go to Thurmont and visit the Fall Colorfest. We grabbed some lunch as we walked around. We then got back to the land. The weatherman had predicted rain to continue till later that evening. We decided to start clearing the small area next to the test house area where we planned to park our backhoe (when it arrived). We set to work with our clippers and brush cutter. At one point we took a break and started setting up the kelly kettle to make some tea. Unfortunately all the wood we found on the land was damp and we just couldn’t get the twigs to fire up. Alan decided to put in a few drops of gasoline to get the fire started. The first try was a bit scary with a big ball of fire emanating from the kelly kettle when we dropped the lighted matchstick in. Even Patches who was sitting a few feet away; jumped up from her blanket! Undeterred, we tried it again and this time the fire stayed lit. We continued the clearing for a little bit more. The overcast sky meant that we started losing light by 4pm. So we stopped and had a bit of discussion about the test house layout. We then packed and left. That evening we started to look up youtube videos for fixing the tractor; but didn’t have much luck since this was a relatively older tractor. I then located a local John Deere retailer and called the number hoping to find out their hours of operation. It was 8pm and I was expecting a recorded message; instead a very nice lady picked up the phone and told me that she just happened to be there since they were having some kind of event. She gave us the store timings and said that they were closed on Sunday. She asked us to bring the serial and model numbers and said that they would try to help us with parts/advice.
All the excitement of Saturday made us tired. It was 9am by the time I got up on Sunday morning. Alan is a morning person and he was up a bit earlier. We managed to reach the farmer who had agreed to drive the backhoe to our land. We agreed to meet him by noon and pay him for the backhoe. So we stopped by Subway to pick up sandwiches and drove straight to the farmer’s land. He said he would bring it to our land by around 2:30pm. Whilst waiting for the farmer to show up, we noticed a large number of pallets lying around. So we enquired at the farm store to see if they wanted to get rid of them. Turns out, these were pallets they had purchased. Oh well; we can always find a grocery store that wants to discard pallets. By the time we got to the land, the guy who sold us the garden tractor had actually responded to our call and given us some information about putting the belt back – that was so nice of him. We were able to put the drive belt back. However, when we tried to cut the grass; it didn’t work. We noticed that the drive belt and hence the deck belt were not moving. We figured we would have to forget about the tractor for this weekend. We started to work on clearing the location where the house would be built with the clipper and brush cutter……………when suddenly we heard a noise. We turned around and the farmer was already there with the backhoe. Needless to say we again had a bit of a chat about operations and maintenance. We walked him to a couple of slopes on the land to check if it was safe to take the backhoe over that slope. He was confident about one slope; but told us to avoid taking the backhoe on the other. As he left, he wistfully said that the backhoe had served him well for 10 years and that he would miss it. We told him that he was free to stop by whenever he felt like; especially if he wanted some entertainment of watching us drive it! Once he left, Alan got on the backhoe and drove it a bit on the flat area. The video below shows him driving the backhoe. He then very bravely took it up the gentle slope to park it so that it would be hidden from view. We then resumed our land clearing. I setup my android phone to do a hyperlapse video recording as I worked and then moved it for a bit to where Alan was working. By 4pm, we decide to pack up. We covered the backhoe with a brown tarp to reduce its visibility. We then decided to stop by some yard sales that we had seen earlier in the area. When we reached the yard sale (almost 5pm); people were packing up. But we managed to snag some great deals – we got one storage box and two 5 gallon gas containers for a total of $7 and a very good 10 foot long metal chain for $35.
We got home tired but happy. Things could have been better if not for the weather and broken tractor. But things could have been worse too. We are starting to realize the small town feel of the area. People are simple, friendly and everyone seems to know everyone. We were laughing at the thought of the kind of news making the rounds of this quiet town about us – we were wondering if they would be more surprised at what 2 city folks were trying to do or if they were trying to figure out our accents or if we are the first mixed race couple they had met…………that reminds me – A couple of times during the day, we saw a truck drive by and the guy honked and waved at us. We didn’t know what to make of it. But on our drive back home, we saw that truck parked on a house near our land. We are assuming it was just one of our neighbors saying hi to us. We are probably the biggest thing to happen to this town.
#storage #equipment #problem #craigslist #repair
It is settlement day! The settlement itself was very quick and the signing of papers was finished in around 15 minutes. We had a nice chat with the seller. His agent had told him of our plans to build a cob house and the seller had actually looked up photos of cob houses! He owned other tracts of land and knew the forest officer Michael Kays, who we hope to meet soon. The seller talked about wildlife and tree species and succession – he obviously had experience taking care of land and was almost sounding like the guys who talked during the ‘Woods in Your Backyard’ course! Apparently the land was an orchard more than 50 years ago. The forest that has grown in its place is something that developed naturally. This tells us that most of the trees are native species and it is a mature forest. We got other useful bits of information – e.g., his grandfather had a vegetable garden in the same location where we plan to have ours! The location where we plan to put our fruits trees has stone/bricks (from the small house that was on that spot) buried into the ground; this means we will have to dig them up and put in some top soil as we plant the fruit trees. He mentioned the names of some of the neighbors and from the sounds of it, they are really nice people. Apparently, the house behind our land has a clear view of Frederick during winter – it will be interesting to see what kind of view we get. It did sound like the seller had fond memories of coming to the land when his grandfather and father were around. Hopefully, he will be happy with what we end up doing on the land. We celebrated by having some tea and appetizers at Cafe Nola in Frederick before we picked up the spade and hose that we had located on Craigslist.
#purchase #craigslist
I doubt this will be the only tools we will buy from Craigslist. But we managed to get a bunch of useful items over a span of 3 weeks and I decided to log them in a blog post. Note that for each item we buy; there are probably a dozen that we go through and at least 2 or 3 listings that we end up reaching out to. We are not just trying to save money by minimizing what we buy; we do not want to accumulate a lot of clutter and waste time tracking and maintaining stuff.
We first found a really nice wheel barrow for $20. We pounced on this deal since most good wheelbarrows are at least $60 on Craigslist. Besides the guy lived 20 minutes from our house. When Alan went to pick it up; he ended up chatting with the seller. It so happened that the seller was downsizing his house and was trying to get rid of other stuff. So Alan ended up getting a seed disperser, sprayer, rake and another pry for free. Alan then found a guy selling an interesting mix of unique things – it just so happened that we needed all of them – a drill attachment for a stirrer, an emergency starter and compressor, a heavy metal chain, a couple of spanners; a couple of snow chains for a garden tractor (which could double up as a security chain) and a grease gun (which we needed to lube our tractor and backhoe). We got the lot for $75 and the guy threw in a metal drum for free. We were looking for a drum to burn stuff in and this would be perfect. We just need to figure out how to remove the top. We just seem to keep adding sub-projects to our tasks! We then found someone selling a spade in Frederick for $5.00 and a brand new 100′ garden hose for $5 – both were very close to downtown Frederick. This is where our settlement is going to be held on October 7th. So we arranged to pick them up after the settlement on Friday evening.
We also located a really nice 14′ heavy metal chain for $20.00 in Herndon. The guy was moving and didn’t want to carry the heavy chain along. Since I have a friend who lives in the area, I asked her to get the chain from the guy. I hope to pick up the chain from her when I meet her next.
#craigslist #purchase
We have been constantly on the lookout for both tools and materials on Craigslist. We just found a very interesting listing that offered bamboo for anyone willing to dig the bamboo out of the guy’s garden. He was only charging a dollar per bamboo stalk and it was free if we took at least 25. Needless to say, we jumped at the offer since we are planning to use bamboo for indoor accessories; support for temporary structures; possibly garden arches and even the roofing for an outdoor fireplace. We have purchased a slammer tool from The Bamboo Garden. It is an expensive tool; but we figured it would be helpful in many other ways. Since we don’t own a truck or big vehicle; we decided to show up at the guy’s place in Alan’s convertible. We figured we would be able to carry the bamboo poles once we put the top down. Needless to say the guy was surprised when we showed up and didn’t hide his disbelief when he saw our car. He asked if we actually planned to take the poles in THAT and we nodded vehemently. He then took us to his bamboo clump; which turned out to be taller than we expected. The only condition was that we wouldn’t leave any leaves on his garden; lest they take root elsewhere. He then left to run errands and we started working away. An hour and a half later we only had 12 or 13 stalks taken down. We decided to drag the poles to our car; strip off the leaves and load up the car. We had to cut most of the poles into 2 halves. The photos and videos below tell the whole story. Alan used his belt to tie the poles together. I sat on the back to help with the navigation. We tried to avoid the gaze of other motorists on the way home. Fortunately, our neighbors were not out. Else, we would have had a lot of explaining to do! We then discovered that the bamboo needs a cool dry place to ‘dry’. This meant we couldn’t leave them outside. We dropped off the leaves to compost in our back and dragged the bamboo poles inside the house. Also, we called the guy back to say that we would return the following weekend to take another lot of 12/13 stalks and he was cool with that. We figured we could take the bamboo to the land once we have put down some pallets and have a tarp to cover them. Meanwhile, Alan’s colleague told him of a publicly available clump of bamboo plants in the Potomac area. Apparently people come there all the time to take bamboo stalks. It is nice to see people getting excited about this project and offering information! To cut a long story short; we scheduled a time the following weekend to cut some more bamboo at the guy’s garden. But we got held up waiting on a farmer who was supposed to meet us to show his backhoe to us. So we had to postpone the bamboo cutting to another day.
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