Well, something is happening! Today we got the driveway half completed and the trench for the electricity is dug.

Although the weather couldn’t have been much worse. Today was the first real snowfall of the winter and it is quite early this year. It snowed overnight and kept snowing until after lunchtime, eventually we ended up with about 10cm or more. Made life difficult, especially considering we hadn’t changed the tires on the car to winter ones yet :-(. But we managed to survive :-).

Lea and Risto (Pia’s parents) came down for the weekend and also brought along Pia’s aunt and her partner (who live just out of Helsinki). Risto had arranged for a local guy to do the driveway and trench. Not the best conditions, but he managed to do both and we even had a BBQ :-).

Lea and Risto brought a tent with them and that was set up under the trees along the section boundary. The guy who brought the tractor couldn’t get the fill for the driveway today, so he cleared the drainage ditch and we installed the pipe Risto brought. Then using some of the dirt from the driveway he covered the pipe and smoothed out the surface. Risto also brought some sheeting with him that goes between the driveway base and the upper layer. It prevents the mixing of the layers (I’m not sure why, but it probably prevents frost damage). During the week the guy will finish the rest of the drive with a truck-load of dirt and then flatten it all out. He also dug the trench for the power cable. It is about 10 metres long and had to be just under a metre deep. Just as well he did it, the ground is quite full of tree roots, so it wouldn’t have been much fun to dig it out myself. Risto had the chainsaw with him as well, so we cleared all the trees that might be in the way and added them to our wood piles. 

Here are some pictures from today. You can compare these with the ones from last weekend! From left to right: Before starting, tractor making the driveway, Lea making coffee, the semi-completed driveway, BBQ time in the tent.