The Great Off Grid Ozark Adventure: part 9

Note: This content was written out long before it was published here on the blog. So although this post is being published in early 2025, it was written several months ago. If you’re just finding this post, I recommend starting with part one here to get more background.

As I continued to work on the road, I spread the gravel more thinly and pulled it into a pile to add more down later as it gets wet. We started hoping for a little bit of rain. We didn’t need anything major, just a little moisture to help pack it down. After we did that, I was finally able to get it where I could get in and out on our road. We only needed to use the old access once after the due date. I just had to get a good amount of momentum before going up the last hill. Even though it was rough, it felt good to use a road that I made. It’s not something I would ever have thought I’d have to do!

Meet Mickey. Short for McJagger. I have no idea where this rooster came from or what his name actually was if he had one. He lived somewhere on the edge of the woods across the street and when he heard me working he would come over and hang out with me. He just stayed nearby every moment I was working. I’m guessing he is long gone now, but I enjoyed his company while I was out working long hours on the road.

Although we had finally made some more progress with the road, I started feeling mentally stuck again. I could see that our culvert was functioning well, and I didn’t want to ruin that. It could probably be buried deeper, but the tractor I bought have a digger and wasn’t really able to do that much deep digging. It would have taken me forever. I could rent a digger, but we were working on a tight budget at that point. Finally, I landed on ordering a load of fill dirt. This made sense to me because the road dips down a steep hill, then goes up to the culvert, then goes back down and was flat for about 50 feet before going up another steep hill. One of the issues is the first (or last if you’re leaving) steep hill. If I pulled the gravel off of it and filled in with dirt, compacted it and then loaded rock back on it, it would help solve the culvert issue, and take the sharpness out of the hill. So, I made the plan, ordered the dirt and went to work. The dirt came a little late, but we were ready. It only took me an hour or two to reshape the road with the dirt. The next step was to compact and spread the rock again. That worked out very well. The fill dirt had a lot of rock in it, and was a compact-able soil. It took the gravel well. Then some friends we had made came to help us and we got smaller gravel and some course sand from the wash on the other side of the culvert and we used that to lock in the larger gravel. It still needs more, but that made a huge difference in being able to drive in and out! At this point, we felt that the road was at a point that we could leave it and it I can continue making improvements to it. I am planning on adding more fill dirt on the other side of the culvert and to the base of the other steep hill. The smoother we can make it, the better it will be. As long as the water always has a place to go! I’m learning that is vitally important!

We had also been working on other projects. We had brought a load of things that we had planned on storing in our Alaska structure. Since that didn’t pan out, we needed a plan B. One of the things we had brought were some old tin roofing panels. We were going to use them to build a chicken coop. I adjusted that plan a little and decided to build a slightly larger structure that could be a shed, then turned into a goat shelter/barn/chicken coop later. This was a fun project. We harvested Cedar trees from our property. Some were already dead, others had been tipped over and a few we just cut down. There are an abundance of good Cedars there and they are good to build with because they are pretty straight, they are naturally rot resistant, and prolific. If you haven’t noticed we’re not shy to buck convention and try things out of the box. This was the case here. We practiced notching and attaching cedar by making a few smaller projects. My son seemed to naturally take to this style of building and we had a good time working on our shed. We built a frame out of roundwood, then attached the roof. For siding, we visited the local Amish sawmill and bought a bundle of reject wood. It’s the stuff they cut from the outside of the tree to make square boards, they also include smaller cuts that aren’t quite good enough to sell as structural lumber. It was cheap. In the end, we spent about $40 in nails and screws, $40 on the Amish wood, and a few bucks in gas for the chainsaw.

One day while we were working on it, Ethan started to get hungry. It was clouding up and we could hear thunder in the distance so we figured we would go grab something quick like a peanut butter sandwich and keep working until the rain came. We headed back to the trailer and just as we started getting food, I heard a few rain drops hitting the trailer roof. I told Ethan I was going to go back to get the tools put away while he made food for us. By the time I got back to the build site, a large storm had rolled in. It was thundering, pouring, and blowing like crazy. I got the tools gathered but was 100% soaked by the time I got back. Water was already running on the ground and the heavens unleashed! The storm was larger and lasted longer than we expected. I looked out the window and saw that several low spots around us had turned into full on creeks. It turned out that we had parked the trailer in a great spot as far as that was concerned because a lot of water from the hill was draining to the creek right past us in several places but luckily not right where we were. We hung out in the trailer for the rest of the day.

While it was nice to have a physical break, we felt a little coop crazy at the same time. Finally the rain stopped but there was water everywhere. We couldn’t work, we couldn’t go anywhere, and we had to just stay hunkered down. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but I knew that with our half finished road, and the dirt trail that we had to take to even get to our road, would not be passable until things dried out a little bit and I didn’t know how long that would take. To make matters worse, our drinking water that we were hauling in was running rather low. We did capture some of the rain water but we didn’t even really think about it until it was mostly too late. Besides that, a lot of it got bugs in it so it wasn’t really great for drinking. “It wouldn’t rain until at least February”… the words echoed in my mind and I laughed a little at the irony!

The next morning, the sun was out and things were drying up well. I went and checked on our road and our culvert. I was happy to see that very little damage had been done. The culverts did their jobs and diverted the water properly! By afternoon, I was thinking that we could probably drive on the road. We also received a text from friends who had come to help us a few days prior inviting us to dinner. We gladly accepted and wrapped up our work that day early to stop at the store for some much needed provisions and to get something to contribute to dinner. While we were eating dinner, I happened to notice flashes out the window. Their house must be pretty well insulated because I didn’t hear the rain outside. I opened the door and was blown away by the torrent of rain… again. I was really nervous about getting home but at this point there was nothing I could do. They looked on their weather app and said it should be letting up in an hour or two. We hung out there and the rain just never let up. Finally, near midnight, it let up and we left as quickly as we could. I was still nervous and wasn’t sure how we were going to fare on our road. In the end, it didn’t matter. We couldn’t even get that far. We turned off the highway and the main gravel road that leads to our property was totally impassible. It was basically a river! I didn’t even consider driving through it. I didn’t know how deep it was and the water was moving quickly. It wasn’t worth risking our lives. And even if we did get through, if we couldn’t get into our property, we would be stuck. We had no choice but to turn around. After looking at that same spot later, I was very glad we didn’t try to drive it. It was easily over 6 feet deep. We texted our new friends and they graciously invited us to come back and stay the night. We slept on the couch and got up first thing to go buy better tires for the truck!

Our normally peaceful and calm creek front turned into a raging river with trees getting swept downstream. The wet weather creek that is normally either mostly dry or just a small stream turned into a large creek.

It turns out that roads were closed, and a lot of water had come through. We spent a little time getting tires and running some other errands and then drove home. We had to take the long way because of a flooded bridge. The bridge has a meter to show you how deep the water is if it goes over. It was about 6 ½ feet high. That gauge was not even visible so the water level above the bridge was deeper than that! In two days there was 9-10 inches of rain! Our annual precipitation in Utah is 11”. Although it was a little crazy to witness, it was really good to watch and see how the climate is different, how the land drains, and especially, how our property drains. It confirmed to me that the spot I was considering for the house is a good spot! No flooding there at all.
Again, it was confirmed to me that culverts are a good thing, and that we definitely need one. We had a lot of drainage come though it. It also showed me that the ditch leading to the culvert needed to be reinforced. It overflowed and water went around and onto the road. In addition, we put in a ditch from that spot on the side of the road down to the other culvert as an overflow protection. Eventually that part of the road is going to be raised up so it shouldn’t be as much of an issue. What an adventure!

To be continued…