Pictures: Land-clearing and the footer

I haven't taken as many pictures as I've wanted to, but here are a few shots of our house progress recently. The two shots below are of the heavy equipment that cleared the trees away from the house-site and the septic field. The operators of these machines were impressive: they could, almost gently, pluck a large tree from the ground without disturbing its neighbors.



They soon had the beginnings of a driveway, which has now been culverted and graveled and smoothed:



The tree-clearing guys did an excellent job. They knew that we're planning on having a woodburning stove, so they made a separate stack of wood that's best for burning (not pine, mostly).



After the land was cleared, a silt fence was put up. That means if water washes some of the soil away from the construction site, it doesn't go into the little stream and thence into the river.



Here's our wonderful contractor, Mr. Dave Hurst, staking out the house's perimeter, with measuring tape and cool laser-gadgets and...stakes:



After which, ANOTHER piece of heavy machinery arrived to dig out the foundation/footer of the house.




Creating trenches that eventually looked like this. Note the rebar.



Then yet another large vehicle showed up (yeah, the carbon footprint for this phase is huge): the cement truck!



And Dave and his assistant expertly directed the chute on the truck to place just the right amount of cement in each trench.



When they were finished, the trenches looked like this:



So now the house site looks like this:



Next up: blocks/bricks.

Thank you all SO much for your encouragement, prayers, suggestions, and help. The process is well and truly underway.