Photo Essays About The Construction of Oak au Vino

April 26th 2011: The day before the 'big brush off'. George Ebejer (Backhoe George) was building the septic system and digging the foundation pit for the house. He promised to refill the percolation test holes when he had the chance. I decided to have him also remove as much of the remaining brush on the western slope of our hillsides. I asked him to look at the situation with the little oak in its thicket of berry brush. George said, "No problem". We agreed to a price for the extra work. I trusted George totally. He had already proven himself worthy of my trust and he was an excellent worker. I knew I'd be happy with the result.

April 27th 2011: George set to work. In short order he had scraped the brush from the ground and swept it into a large pile of brush, rocks and dirt. The little oak was free at last.

April 27th 2011: George salvaged some large boulders including that one I had sat upon on that fateful day last November. He moved them close to the little oak to protect it.

April 27th 2011: George had completed the installation of the 'chamber septic field system' and I include this photo here to show that the Oak au Vino pad area (uphill from the little oak) lines up well with the leach field lines. This is good since we will have occasion to drive down there and it helps to know where NOT to drive - like not over the lines themselves.

April 27th 2011: George covered the septic lines and smoothed the dirt out. The little oak looks a bit forlorn, all alone now.

February 23rd 2012: Almost a year had passed since we had 'freed' the little oak. Thought you might want to see it 'up close' to better understand my fascination with it. Kinda scrawny 'eh? We were now going to burn the big pile of brush left from last year. We had been pulling star thistle plants for several days and had a huge pile of them to burn as well. Liza is taking a moment to prepare some sandwiches and drinks for us. My son, Aaron, had volunteered to come out and help us with the work in the spring and summer of 2012.

March 1st 2012: We got the big pile of brush burned after several days. We had started a smaller fire nearby and took brush from the big pile to feed the little one. That made for a safer burn.

March 2nd 2012: We had a lot of ashes and we spread some around the little oak and the rest we put into a berm at the fire pit and decided to make it into a berry patch. We envisioned a lot of blackberry bushes growing there.

April 30th 2012: A full year since we 'freed' the little oak. Now we have a ring of protective stones around it and the area is looking rather good. I am laying a rock face on the downhill side of the BerryBurn Patch.

May 11th 2012: The rock face on the BerryBurn Patch is done. I have added a twenty foot 'arm' of rock to the east of the little oak. This is the start of the pad for the Oak au Vino shed. And above the oak can be seen the first line of 20 grape vines that were planted by Aaron and Liza in March.

May 25th 2012: A little overcast on Black Mountain heading our way. This photo shows how quickly the land can recover. The green grass is growing now where last year had been just a dirt field after the septic system was installed.

April 13th 2013: Another year has passed and little progress had been made on the Oak au Vino shed. Of course, other aspects of the development plan were well underway - the house foundation and basement. I did manage to get some time to try to grub out the arc for the Oak au Vino shed pad. "Try", was the operative word since the rock proved to be too great a challenge. The pick just bounced off the lava rock. I could see that I needed Backhoe George again. But he was very busy this year and not available. I decided to wait another year, if need be.

October 11th 2013: Even though the rock proved too hard to do much about, I did get enough rock out that I was able to add the west wing to the pad face. Slow but sure.....

April 14th 2014: If you have read in the Sangha Shed and Sangha Rest Shed pages about my issue with the 'red neck trailer park' and how crowding things seems to force me to move faster, then you can appreciate why I made my first purchase of the new construction season. Those are the nine (9) foundation supports for the Oak au Vino shed! They are sitting right where I cannot avoid seeing them every day! There will be another shed by this winter!

May 15th 2014: I called George a week ago and he just called to say, "Today! I'm on my way up". So I took this status photo to show what it looked like before we start the grading of the Oak au Vino pad.

May 15th 2014: George and his backhoe tractor are making short work of what took me two weeks with a pickaxe!

May 15th 2014: George is finishing the grading for the west end of the Oak au Vino pad.

May 15th 2014: George finished the grading for the Oak au Vino pad in less than 2 hours. He is worth more money than he charges - but don't tell him until he finishes all of my work first!