Brad and Sonni’s 50 acre parcel in Montana (or more accurately, their dogs Pip and Mac’s parcel) is beautiful. Bounded on the low side by the road along the Clark Fork river and on the high side by National Forest land, there are plenty of trees to accompany plenty of privacy.
Pip and Mac’s Montana camp
What is not on their land is any building; they plan to do all of that by themselves. When we arrived, they’d set up camp, roughed in a road to their picturesque homesite, and found a spot for a well. There’s still a lot of work to do, and work on a ranch in Montana requires a lot of tools.
Mike and Brad doing some dozing
Brad and Sonni have obliged – they’ve invested in a bulldozer, a four-wheel drive ATV/golfcart hybrid, a tractor (of course with a backhoe, a log splitter, and who knows how many other attachments), and any other tool you can imagine might be necessary for clearing land and building a house.
Even splitting wood is fun on the ranch
We spent a long weekend playing at being ranchers. We used the bulldozer to knock down trees, used the tractor to move dirt, cut down trees (well, honestly, watched Brad cut down the giant tree and stood a safe distance away), split wood, and helped to install a new floor in the temporary trailer on site.
Pip overseeing ranching work from her perch on the mule
And of course we spent plenty of time on the best part – enjoying the long Montana evenings sitting around the campfire with friends.
Installing a new floor in the trailer
Good friends and a campfire- the best!
