Today was day three for the masons. They are supposed to finish up this afternoon, and had made good progress when I left around noon. It sure is nice to see those block walls going up. It is finally starting to look like a house. We should get an inspection later this week and have the framers come at the start of next week. I really like the way the house sits. I think it will look pretty good once it is finished. The porch and deck should both be fantastic. The garage is going to be a little bit of a challenge though. The platform connecting the doors is going to be higher than I thought, and it might be rather difficult to arrange the stairs.

It will be a huge relief once the house is framed and roofed. Then it will be time for me to take over and start really working. I am rather nervous about the framing though. I hope that my designs are accurately constructed. It would have been easier to use off the shelf plans, but I couldn’t find one that met our needs. An architect drawn plan would have been too expensive. So we are just sort of winging it.

I have never been so happy to see holes in the ground. The footers were dug yesterday and rebar was placed. This morning the county inspector came and gave it his approval. Tomorrow they pour concrete. Early next week the block goes in and framing should start the following Monday. There were a couple of soft spots where they had to dig deeper than expected and they need a pump to get the concrete everywhere, but otherwise everything went great. The soil is fantastic and they only hit a little bit of rock. Things should really start moving along now.

We got a dusting of snow overnight, which lasted about fifteen minutes once the sun rose. Traffic to Columbia was pretty light this morning, so I guess many people stayed hunkered down indoors. I know that Metro schools opened a couple of hours late. The little bit of snow was still quite pretty, and made me long for a real amount. That probably won’t be happening until December though.

There wasn’t any snow on the ground at the farm. There was however an unidentified animal, maybe a groundhog. I managed to get a crappy picture of him with my phone, shown below. It was zoomed in to the maximum and then drastically cropped, so it makes the “Nessie” photograph look museum worthy. I took the picture from the front seat of my car while I was waiting for a phone call. Frustratingly, my SLR with telephoto lens was in the back of the car. I have seen him before – he lives under the one remaining shed, but previous spottings have merely entailed him running back to the safety of his home. I got a nice long glimpse of him as he meandered around. He eventually went back underground, at which point I retrieved my camera and prepared it to photograph him. Unfortunately he never returned.

After running a number of errands in downtown Columbia I returned to the farm for a little tractor time. I tried to take advantage of the still rather wet ground and uproot some stumps. These were primarily from smaller trees that I had cut down to a couple of feet. Unfortunately that limited amount of trunk made it difficult to get much leverage, but it went okay. Still a bit of work yet to go though. This week I need to get a fire going to burn the stumps, brush, and the last of the house debris. The weather should be great for working outside over the next few days. I just need to get stuff done before the snakes come out to play!