Kennedy’s Little House in the Big Woods

Meet our neighbors! We set up a trail cam on one of the trees outside our RV, both for security and out of interest. These are some of the furry critters who have visited our homestead.  

 Austin and Lee, Laura's dad, have joined us several times at the property. This is one of the huge piles of trees we've been de-limbing and cutting into logs. We purchased an ATV and cart for working around the property, mostly clearing trees. It's also been a lot of fun! Our first of two work days Lee and Austin have joined us for. We've taken advantage of the excavated area to set up target practice with our bows and arrows. Austin is on the left and his girlfriend, Jenna, is on the right.

In May, 2022, the excavator showed up to dig out the area for the foundation. Unfortunately, we had to stop at a certain point to wait for our well to be drilled. After several months of waiting, we were finally able to get our well drilled. Our next door neighbors' wells are at 350 ft. and 500 ft. Our driller went 900 feet and didn't strike water. Ugh! We had to call in a fracking company to pump pressurized water into the well hole to see if we can get water from it. We're still waiting a couple more weeks to know for sure if we have water or not.  

  In April 2022 we got our 230 ft. driveway put in. It was a pretty momentous occasion since, up until this point, we were only able to walk onto our property. Driving up the driveway felt like we were finally making progress on building. A few weeks later, the RV we purchased was delivered to the property. That gave us the ability to stay overnight and entire weekends, which we've done quite a bit over the summer.

Things are starting to move forward with our dream home! Over the past week Core Electric (our electric co-op) came out to the property and performed an engineering survey. We're expecting to get their schematic within the next couple of weeks. On the same day Bob met with the engineer, he also met with a prospective contractor to put in our driveway and install the septic system. Since we already have the driveway permit, we're just waiting on his estimate to possibly get started. It'll be great to finally be able to drive onto our property. We also got the final engineering plans for the house from our architect earlier this week so we can submit them to the county for our building permit. Lots of great things happening and feels like things are finally moving forward. Austin joined Bob on the day after Thanksgiving at the property to do some cutting. We had a big tree that had been toppled over that we needed to trim branches from and cut up. Taking in the view from the ...

We got the permit to put in the driveway so we spent Friday afternoon (08/27/21) clearing trees. Next step is to clear the stumps and then call in the big machinery to carve out the driveway. That’ll be a big milestone for us since we’ve been eagerly awaiting being able to actually drive onto our property. Bob cutting down one of the first trees: Laura clearing the lower branches to reduce the chance of Bob getting impaled when the trees fall: Bob got cocky felling trees and tried to cut one down the opposite way it wanted to fall. The result? Not one but two chain saws stuck in a tree! After much hacking away with the axe, we were finally able to work the larger chain saw out and rescue the second.

We started the first step of building our dream house in Pine, Colorado by closing on 8 acres on July 9, 2021. After three long years of searching and somewhere around 100 properties visited, God blessed us with the perfect piece of land.