Posted on by Murphy's Law Ranch

Work In Progress

We have been hard at work at the ranch. For now, you won’t see many (if any) pictures of our fields. The north field is currently in corn, and the south field is currently in hay. Both fields will be done for the season in the next 4-6 weeks. At that point, they will either be cover cropped or tarped in preparation for Spring planting. More on all that at a later date.

That being said, our main focus has been around the house…or should I say what used to be the house. Our property is a bit unique in that it has an existing foundation from a previous house. Long story short, the previous house was relatively new when it was struck by lightning and burned. The only thing left of the original house is the foundation, which consists of a stone front porch, full walkout basement, and 3-car garage slab. In the coming months, we plan to use that foundation for our new home. Don’t panic, the foundation has been signed off on by our structural engineer, so it is safe to use.

The area immediately around the ‘house’ has not seen a mower or weedeater since the house burned down 3 years ago. So our focus has been getting that area cleaned up. The flowerbeds around the old home were extensive, and clearing them out has been quite a chore. We’ve spent three solid days working on them, and there is still a ways to go. We haven’t even touched the yard yet (which, in some places, is chest high on me!). I have included a couple before pictures so you can see the mess we’ve been dealing with.

Front of the House. You can barely see the stone porch columns over the weeds.
Opposite view front of the house. You can barely see the stone column at the corner of the garage.
Middle of the Driveway Loop. There are some beautiful trees and shrubs in there… I promise!

The pictures don’t even begin to do it justice. It is a lot of hard work, but we’re enjoying it. There is something to be said about getting to live out your dream with your best friend and life partner. So yes, it may be hard work, but we’re together…and we know it’s just the beginning of a whole lot more hard work. Fear not, I have included a few progress pictures.

Looking toward the garage (That’s my truck parked in the garage!). There are a few plants we’ll be keeping here…the evergreen tree on the left, the low evergreen bush in the middle, and the large shrub on the right (for now).
View standing in the driveway looking toward the front porch. The previous owner had two big ponds and a stream that flowed between them. Initially, our plans were to level this whole area and start over, but now that we can actually see the ponds, we may keep them. The stone porch columns may or may not stay…depends on what our drafter comes up with.
I took this picture standing in front of my truck (on the garage slab), so this is our front yard. A week ago, it was so full of weeds and brush, I couldn’t even walk through here.
This is the loop in the driveway, but the picture is taken in the opposite direction from the ‘before’ picture. I actually took this picture before we cut down the large tree in the middle. The two large arborvitae are staying, as are the viburnum bushes (purple flowers in the back). The massive rosebush on the left is a maybe. We’re going to give it a haircut and see what it looks like in the Spring.

On the to-do list for tomorrow is installing our mailbox and knocking down all the brush around our septic tanks and patio. I will try to remember to take some before pictures. Over the next two weeks, we’ll have to clear a path to the well and to the electrical box, because…. our temporary house arrives the end of the month!!! We discussed many different options for housing while we waited for our house to be built. And we felt the best option was to live on the property during construction… that way we could watch over the job site after hours and be close by to see the progress each day. After kicking around several ideas, a manufactured home seemed to be the best choice. It’s fairly easy to get onto the property and should be fairly easy to sell and move off the property once the new house is finished. After several weeks of searching and having 2 trailers sold out from under us, we are happy to say we purchased one a few days ago!!! Here is a picture.

This is Casa del Murphy! The outside could use a good power washing and maybe a new paint job in the Spring. The inside has been completely redone, we’re just going to paint the walls since lavender isn’t our color.

To keep our expenses lower, we opted to go with a used one (new ones depreciate just like new cars). And the one we found is perfect for us! Yes it’s small, but it’s only temporary (and beats the hell out of an RV, because that was our back-up plan). I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures on moving day…we should have that date by the end of the week.

So much has happened in the past few weeks and so much more is going to be happening in the next few weeks. We spent several minutes this afternoon just sitting on our garage slab looking at what is now Murphy’s Law Ranch. It’s hard to believe this beautiful little piece of paradise is ours. We are so excited to share our journey with you! Stay tuned for more updates!

Peace, Love, & Farming,

The Murphy’s

2 Replies to “Work In Progress”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *