Drumroll Please..............

..........we have TRUSSES.  That is right!  We have most of the great room covered and felted, and now we have the left wing of the house trussed.  We also have power poles up to the house.  No wires but the poles are in place and the water line repaired.  Apparently, the power company does check before they dig. ;-)

Trusses Over Left Wing of House

Really feels like great progress was made this week.  Which kind of helps out with the news we got this week.  Remember the little, single lane bridge that we had to work around to get stuff to job site-turns out DOT will be replacing it this summer.  Luckily, we have about thirty days notice before it closes. So we can get things to the job site before the easy way is closed.  Of course once it is closed a trip from town that used to take ten minutes will take at least 45 minutes.  You got to love rural America.

In other property news, we had a death.  The mother Eastern Bluebird from the machine barn nest was killed.  The dad has been doing a great job caring for his brood.  I offered them food to try and help him out, but they are about ready to fledge and have reached that stage where they will have nothing to do with humans.
Also, predator guards don't do anything to protect nest-boxes from bears.  The Eastern Bluebirds in one of the other nest-boxes fledged.  I cleaned the box out several days ago and someone was already starting to rebuild.  When I went to do my rounds today, I found the pole with the box on it bent flat to the ground.  No bird eggs or babies for the bear but it looked like he got a lot of ant larvae from a pile of deteriorating logs that he torn into that was nearby.

House Site 5/15/2016

Toad at Old Cattle Waterier

20 Hoops Later.....

.....we got approved for our septic permit.  The septic system has been put in and got the official "okey dokey" from the sanitarian.  Sorry his title isn't merely sanitarian, or anal sphincter as I call him, it is Senior Environmental Health Specialist. From now on I will have to remember to call him Senior Anal Sphincter.

We have had great weather and our construction team have not let the grass grow under their feet.  We have a septic system, a construction site pad cut, and all the cisterns in place.

Yea, last week was a good week.

RIF

When I was a kid there were commercials for RIF-Reading Is Fundamental.  I see from Google that the group that created them still exists.  Apparently our local health department has never seen them.

We got a letter from the health department  denying  our septic permit.  The reason-"A locked gate prevented access to the property for evaluation."  In my former life, I used to deal with the health department, specifically the sanitarians, all the time.  So, I knew going above and beyond was not something in their job description.  If it wasn't simple, they would usually find a way not to do the job.  With this knowledge, we put on the form to please call us, with the number written big, to obtain access to the future house location because there was a locked gate.  Well, the sanitarian decided to just go out there and see if he could do the site survey-nope locked gate.  To his credit, once he saw the locked gate, he did call, but he got voicemail and didn't leave a message.  Oh wait!!  Nevermind, I see that this is all our fault.  We gave him the number but we didn't tell him what to do if a human didn't answer.

The plan now is to have the guy who is going to put the septic in, call the Sanitarian and set up a mutually agreeable time to do the survey.