Wednesday, May 29, 2013

10,000 Page Views

Bleecker Mountain Life is nowhere near as popular as our Drift Away blog, which gets 10,000 page views a month, but 10,000 hits in just a few months is pretty cool, I think, especially because we're not into the fun stuff yet like operating heavy machinery.  If you haven't done so, click the "join this site" button on the left side of the  page, right over here...
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Yesterday Pam went off to register her Miata and to pick up a used mitre saw that I bought from a local Facebook swap shop group.  A 12" Dewalt for $175 is a good deal, I think.  New they sell for $399 at Home Cheapo.

I'm retired and living on a social security check and a mortgage I'm holding.  I have a little stash in the bank, but that has to last us the rest of my lifetime, and with my luck I'll live to be 110, so I have to be careful with it.  I'm going to try to build our Unabomber cabin as inexpensively as I can buying good quality used tools and materials whenever possible.  I started a spreadsheet to track the costs, and I'll keep you updated as we progress.   This is the list thus far.

Item  
1954 Ferguson Tractor 2600
generator 1000
mitre saw 175
screen house 200

Total, $3,975.  I posted about the tractor the other day.  The generator was purchased from marina friends Geoff and Linda in Brunswick Georgia.   It's a brand new 15 KW diesel generator with 1/2 hour of run time on it. I'm adding the screen house to our list even though it's at our rental house since we'll move it later.

I got an estimate last night for grading the few acres of land we cleared.  $1,500 a day for two guys, a bulldozer, and some kind of stump puller.  They estimate four days.  Ugh.  I figure the well will be $10,000 or so for 150 feet of drilling.  I'll be meeting with the architect on Thursday morning and I'll be getting a proposal from him too.  The money is vanishing quickly.  Maybe I can get some of that money back by becoming a potato farmer.

The local co-op said they need Adirondack Blue potatoes.  If I plant one acre of them, the yield is 200 to 300 cwt/a (hundred weight per acre).   So 200 cwt/a is 20,000 pounds of potatoes.  At, say $.50 a pound wholesale, that's $10,000.  Of course, I'd have to buy one of these.


Soon I'll start doing much of the work myself, such as digging for the foundation and leech field with the backhoe.  And perhaps building a house.  We'll see.

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like you should just buy the place where you are now and sell the land you bought!!

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  2. Or just move back on DRIFT AWAY and go to the Bahamas and drink victory beers!

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  3. You're thinking the coop is going to buy 20,000 lbs of blue potatoes? Oh my. More realistically, you would get a store credit from any potatoes you may grow to put toward your purchases. Before you head south (assuming you will in the fall) you should take soil samples from what will be your garden areas and send them for analysis to see what is needed. Potatoes don't like lime, but veggies do and it takes time to become available to plants for next summer.

    Do you know any dowsers? They are used a lot here to good advantage. T'were me, I'd leave some shape in the land.

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