First off, Jane and John wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. We also encourage you to “remember the reason for the season” – the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
John was anxious to renew his relationship with his pickup truck and tractor that was interrupted for a year so we made a mad dash to Florida to visit friends and collect the truck/tractor and the little utility trailer and convoy back to the ranch. We drove to DeLand in two long days (it’s about 1200 miles from the ranch to DeLand) in the Jeep and drove back in three days. It was a tiring and long drive back since we were each driving a vehicle and couldn’t share driving responsibilities. Fortunately we had pretty good weather (except for morning fog every day) and no problems except a flat tire on the equipment trailer which was quickly repaired. John feels good about being able to drive his truck to the home improvement store instead of the Jeep – also the truck fits right in around this ranching country!
We are having fun getting used to our new place and planning how to make our mark on the little ranch. One of the very first things on the list was to hire a contractor to build a barn/shop/motorhome storage building. We found a gentleman through a reference that has built many commercial and residential metal buildings in the area, liked him and decided on size, color and cost. The building will be metal on a 50′ by 50′ with a 5″ thick 3,000 PSI concrete slab. It will be about 16′ high at the ridge so our motorhome will fit on one end of the structure. John’s shop will be 30′ by 50′ and the motorhome will occupy 20′ by 50′. Excavation has started but
the holidays have really slowed everything down. Another issue we addressed immediately was to hire a fence company to install a much wider gate so we can get our motorhome in and out easily, and heavy equipment for the barn construction. There will be two 16′ long gates that we can open and close manually that will accommodate the largest vehicle. We are leaving the current gate entrance in place and we will use that for car and pickup truck access to the property, it has an automatic opener which is quite handy – we just push a button to open the gate.