Time to build.... FINALLY!

We just got the construction loan approved and the house has been ordered from the factory.  We are building an Energy Star Modular home that is built in the factory and taken to the home site. We ran into a lot of new rules with the bank and getting a construction loan is extremely difficult these days.  They said the house we were building was to SMALL! Apparently homes on 40 acres are either mansions or trailers so they asked us to build it bigger so that it would appraise compared to larger homes instead of trailer homes.  So much for trying to build a responsibly sized house... :)
After adding 2 bedrooms and increasing the house to 1,832 square feet and several other tricky hoops to jump through, they gave us the go ahead. Our friend Matt is adding the additional bedrooms on for us.
The factory is about 5 weeks back ordered so we should have the house in about 8 weeks ready to set on the basement that should get poured in the next 3 weeks.  We should be in sometime in August.
Its actually a good thing we didn't get in last fall, we had a ton of snow this year and it is an hour drive into the city.

We went down this weekend and planted some trees along the road frontage to start blocking off the street. The trees are called Willow Hybrids and grow 6-10 ft per year and up to 30 ft tall to create a hedge. We planted 25 so far and got halfway across the front of the land. We will just make cuttings off these and finnish the rest later.
We also officially started the farm with a crop of 25 blueberry bushes. They are 2 year root stock so hopefully late summer this year or next summer we will have buckets of blueberries!
We set up a twine fence around it to keep the deer away. Hopefully they will do ok while we are gone till the weekends to check on them.

We really wont be able to start tilling until after the house is in. We cant buy a tractor till the construction loan is closed and with all the grading the excavators will have to do they may mess up whatever we start. 

The dogs are doing great and happy to play outside with the nice weather. Izzy has worn a rut in the armrest of our recliner that is strategically placed in front of the wall heater, one day she fell off she was so warm and cozy. 

And Rud insisted on tearing up his toys in protest of the cold weather this year.