Six core decisions
Old habits die hard. After years of visiting to play, relax, and spend time with New England family members, we’re finding it difficult to focus exclusively on the task at hand. So far, work on our property has involved mostly trimming and cutting trees (and there are a lot of trees here). It’s time to make some decisions.
Decision #1: The towering pine has to go, and the undoubtedly enormous root ball with it. We try to find a mill or anyone else interested in taking the tree, but everyone says it’s just too large. We agree to a price with a local excavator willing to take it down with a chainsaw and use a machine to dig up the roots. He promises it will be gone by the time we return.
Decision #2: The septic system needs to be repaired and made usable. We agree to a price and the promise that it, too, will be fixed by the time we return.
Decision #3: We need a reliable source of clean water, ideally something drinkable. We take samples and lean on family to help us get the results to the Vermont Department of Health Laboratory. We share results with locals who tell us their wells have the same findings. The rustic spring well will do for now, but we must find a way to get the water out of the well so we can use it.
Decision #4: We decide to save the old, leaning outhouse out back, repair and return it to service. Locals who learned we were planning to remove it advise us to reconsider. Environmental laws now prohibit the building of new outhouses; ours is grandfathered. Although we don’t relish the thought of performing necessary repairs, at the very least it will be an interesting topic of conversation and a real, working example of Vermont lore.
Decision #5: As much as we would like to save the little house, we’ve been unable to find anyone willing to help us make that happen, for any price. One local source tells us it will cost $15,000 to tear it down: “That’s a four or five dumpster job.” We complete paperwork to have the local volunteer fire department burn it as a training exercise, but we’ll need to spend $2,500 to remove the asphalt siding before it’s torched. We decide to burn it, but maybe we can save $2,500 by removing the siding ourselves.
Decision #6: We must find another place to stay. We suspect our welcome with nearby family is beginning to wane. Of course, they are always happy to see us, but we want to visit more frequently and for longer periods of time, which will undoubtedly complicate things. Too, returning at the end of each day covered with sawdust, dirt, mud, and sweat reminds us of that old saying, “Fish and visitors stink after three days.”
After making this wave of decisions, we vow to return again soon to continue our momentum. We had no way of knowing that one of these core decisions was totally going to change.
