Future home sweet home

This past week I went to our 20 acres of property south of town and took pictures. We purchased this property back in 1998 and had planned on building there immediately, however I decided to go to graduate school and was accepted into a Ph.D program. Doctoral programs are very demanding and I couldn't see myself driving my children the extra distance that living out in the country would require, in addition to working and going to school. So we delayed our plans. We think that now is the time. So we've begun the process of getting the land ready for building. Thus far we've put in a road up to the house building site. We readied the house building site and drilled a well. We hit a major vein/pool/whatever you call it of water. The flow of water is so great that they call our well an agricultural well, which is supposed to be a good thing. Remember that I'm a city girl, so I'm taking their word for it that have an ag well is a good thing. Our most recent improvement is putting in a secondary building site for Dan's garages and a small guest house. We also created a road from the house building site to the secondary building site. As you look at the pictures, keep in mind that the weather is already quite warm and we haven't had rain for a few weeks, so the grasses are already turning from refreshing and cooling green, to dry, get me an iced drink immediately, brown. I do wish that I'd taken these pictures last month, but not much I can do about that now. So let's begin the tour.

This is the view driving up the road to our property. Our property is that hill you see in the upper right corner.

This is a view of our 20 acres from the road. It is at the corner of Cory Canyon Ranch. Our property includes a field at the bottom level. The first rise in the land is where our secondary building site it and the area beyond the first rise is where are house building site is.

Instead of turning right at the corner you saw in the previous picture, we drive straight to enter our property from the west. This is another view of the fields located at the base of our property. The top of the rise in this picture is the secondary building site.

In this picture, I've just entered our property via the west gate and if you can see the lone oak tree in the distance, that is were I took the picture at the corner where it said Cory Canyon Ranch. The boxes sitting out in the field are bee boxes. My brother in law Fred owns an apiary and he likes to occasionally store his bees on our property. This has not always been the best thing for Fred, as one time his son, Fred Jr. was smoking the bees out of their boxes and accidentally dropped the smoker into the grass, which started a bit of a fire, requiring the county fire department to come and put it out. I believe my nephew is still paying the five figure bill for that little accident.

This is a picture of our driveway heading into the house building site. Dean, our road and site builder, recently widened this drive and placed rocks on the side bank. I was told that these are placed there to prevent erosions. Again, I'm a city girl and I'm taking their word for it that this is what you do. It really is quite unattractive, so I think we're going to plant some ivy or something so that it looks green and inviting, instead of dirty, dry, and uninviting. Onward to the building site!

Here's the house building site. As you can see Dean still has some of his heavy equipment up there. On this day he was finishing up the road to the secondary building site and the secondary building site. He was laying down the gravel. See the pile of gravel in front of that big machine? That's my cute little blue BMW to the right of the picture. Dan got me that as a graduation gift. I just love it.

Here's the view of the coastal ranges from our house building site. It was a hazy day, so it is difficult to see the coastals clearly. But take my word for it, this is the best of all the views. We're thinking that this is where we are going to be placing our master bedroom, so this will be our view from there.

Here's the view of the valley from our house building site. This will be the view from our living room, den, kitchen. See that bit of gravel in the bottom left corner? That's our secondary building site.

This is our view of the foothills to the east of us. This will be the view from the kids rooms. The gravel you see at the bottom of the picture is part of the road that we just built that goes to the secondary building site.

This is the road we just build that takes us from the house building site to the secondary building site...isn't it pretty? The mound you see to the right of the picture is part of our house building pad.

Here's the secondary building site. The views are still pretty, but not nearly as pretty as from the house building site. This now concludes our first tour of our future home sweet home.