Owen County Clay – Murphy's Law Ranch

This past week was a flurry of activity. It’s really exciting to see things happening at the farm. Since we are putting a temporary home on the property, all the utilities have to be run to where that home is going to sit. And since our trailer is going to sit where our future barn will be built, all the utilities need to be permanent. The week started with a call to Holey Moley (the call-before-you-dig number; in Indiana it’s 811). As we expected, the only public utilities on our property are internet and electricity.

That little orange flag is a big deal for us. Internet availability was actually one of the first things we checked before making an offer on the property. With both of us working from home (and soon running a business from home), high-speed internet is a must. Most rural areas are last on the list for fiber; thankfully our area was one of the first.

Since septic and geothermal are private utilities, we had to call a private locate company to come out to mark those lines. And just as Murphy’s Law would have it, neither our septic nor geothermal had any sort of metal line the tech could hook onto with his EM reader. However, our tech ‘witched’ them. I know water can be witched, but had no idea you could witch anything else. It was the coolest/weirdest/freakiest thing I have ever seen! Witching is not 100% accurate, but it at least gave us a basic idea of where the lines are so the other utility companies don’t bore through them.

Those pink flags mark our septic line. I told the technician we only needed about 40 feet of line marked out from the tank; just enough the well guy wouldn’t cut it when trenching our new water line. I didn’t tell the tech where the line led, just that it ended about 150 feet out into our field. When he finished marking it, I walked the line he had ‘witched’… and it ended right at our distribution box. We know where the box is located because we have the diagram from when it was installed, but our tech had no way of knowing that. Pretty freakin’ cool.

We were told by the previous owner, the geothermal loop was under the loop in the driveway. We assumed it was under the middle of the driveway loop. Nope! Our driveway makes a big loop in front of the house… and the geothermal lines follow that same path! Who knew? Yes, we told the tech to spray paint on the driveway…the driveway will be sealed next year after construction is finished so the pink is only there temporarily.

The biggest thing that happened this week was our meeting with the engineers from SCI REMC (our power co-op) to figure out how to get power from the transformer to the trailer/barn location. Initially, we were told it was considered a reconnect, because there had previously been power at the property. Our co-op charges $10 a foot to trench and lay line. Which was going to cost us nearly $2000. Power is a necessity, so we were prepared to shell out the money. The engineers left to go eat lunch while the utility tech finished marking the geothermal loop (since their line will go right through that loop). But, when they got back, they had the best news…. our power is going to be run FOR FREE!!! Because we are new customers and there is currently no power on the property (and hasn’t been for over 2 years), Dillon and Carey (the engineers) had gotten their boss’s permission to set up our service as a new service instead of a reconnect…meaning we get 240 feet of line at no charge. Y’all these guys went out of there way, at lunchtime no less, to save us major money. We are so incredibly thankful for them! We will have to pay for the meter base, which is a little pricy since we’re running 400amp service, but that’s it! HUGE RELIEF!!

The electric line is going to be trenched along the edge of our driveway in front of the house, then bored under the driveway to the edge of the south field where our trailer (and future barn) will be located. Since the geothermal lines from the loop into the house cross that trench, we had to dig down 24″ on top of the geothermal lines to show they would not interfere with the electric line (and so the power company didn’t risk hitting them with the trencher). Let me tell you something… our soil sucks. It is heavy, heavy clay. We’ve not had rain in over a month and it was like digging up concrete. We had to stop after about 8″ and run into town to buy a pick axe. Nevertheless, we prevailed, and 4 hours later we had a large pile of crappy dirt in our driveway and a large 2-foot-deep trench in front of the bushes.

It doesn’t look like much, but damn it was a pain in the butt! The good news is, we didn’t find the geothermal lines. They’re supposed to be 4-6 feet down, so it’s good to know they were installed correctly.

Since the spray paint was hard to see, I put pinks dots over the top of it on the picture. Those dots are the geothermal lines running from the loops in the driveway to the basement. And that’s our lovely trench in front of them.

No, those are not rocks. That’s our soil. And under my hand… also not rocks. Soil. Good old Owen County clay. Farming this is going to be a real treat.

Now that we have a game plan with the power company, we have to get our pedestal installed. The electrician will be out Wednesday to take care of that. Then the pedestal has to be inspected and green-tagged by the building inspector. Once the green tag is on, the power company will come back out and put in the line…hopefully by the end of next week. Internet is going to be run in 2 weeks as well. We’re waiting on a call back from the well guy to see if he wants to wait until power is hooked up before he runs our new water lines. Once there is water, we can get the excavator out to trench in our new septic line. Our October 27th deadline is quickly approaching, but I think we’ll get it all done.

In addition to all the exciting (and expensive) stuff, we’ve continued to clean up the property. This weekend we tackled an area near the patio. I’m not really sure why it was all overgrown like it was, maybe because the hayfield didn’t follow the tree line through there, but it needed to be cleaned up. There were several more black locust trees (or as we call them, demon trees) and weeds that were taller than me. It wasn’t a big area, but the difference is astounding.

Next weekend, we are going to focus our efforts on the overgrowth along the creek and tree line. As things start to die back in the Fall, it will be easier to remove them…and also make for less work in the Spring. The creek area is a total disaster; I bet those before and after pictures will be pretty spectacular.

We will be sure to keep y’all up-to-date on the electrician/pedestal situation. It should be done this week, but we live by Murphy’s Law, so you just never know. The tentative moving date for the trailer is October 5th. Y’all, we could have our temporary house out there in a week! The actual move date should be firmed up by the weekend. As of today (September 28th) we’ve owned the property for a month. This past week is the first time it’s really felt like things are moving along. Power, internet, moving date. We can only imagine how different it’s going to be a month from now when we’re actually living here!!!

Peace, Love, & Farming,

The Murphy’s

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