| Article Index |
|---|
| Moving On |
| How It Works |
| Ready to Roll! |
| All Pages |
Around our way, all too often people sell farms to people who tear down the buildings to put up mansions, subdivide the land, hire contractors and subs from wherever is cheapest, and move people in who have no appreciation for the people and the culture they are uprooting. Fine. That's what a lot of folks like to call "Progress" and if it were so bad, they would not sell their land.
But here is a different kind of project. An old farmhouse is resting on a warped bed that can no longer support it. But this house is not going to be torn down. It will be restored after it is jacked up and moved onto a new foundation and site.
The land will still be used for farming and has already been put into a land conservancy.
The heating and cooling will be geothermal and, knowing the history of the developer, it will also use energy from the sun.
Yes, developer! It is part of a development project. For sale.
The people who will be doing the renovation are local. In fact, they are mostly my friends and neighbors.
So I have a vested interest in the successful outcome of this project.
But that is not why I filmed it and put it up on the Internet. I offer it as an example, a story that, I hope, others will tell about other places.
This is that story.
Scot is going into his new house. New only in the sense that he recently bought it.
This is not just some cosmetic landscaping going on. In fact, the ground around the house has been shaved back so that steel beams could be inserted underneath it on all sides.
For this house, this whole house, is going up that hill that they are now shaving down and trimming and will go to the right of the silos you see in the background.
Yes, up that hill... you can see that the ground is soft, even muddy. The house will have to be pulled up, but first the hill has to be shaved smooth, transformed into a sort of road.
I already missed a few things like putting the beams under the house and setting the jacks. I certainly did not want to miss the move! Although I live right in the neighborhood, I wanted to find out when it would happen. Or at least when it was planned.
I thought Scot would know...
That was my introduction to Stan Barber of Larmon House Movers up in Schuylerville, NY. He was running the job. And a lot of the equipment, too. It would also be my introduction to the "We'll see" system of job scheduling.
When the farm boys were young, little did they realize that their toys would become real. Or at least a premonition.
David Lyle, one of the boys who shared those toys now has to climb down from the house in which he grew up.
