We are into our first ever fall at the new property! That means crisp, beautiful days, a lake all to myself, and thousands upon thousands of falling leaves. I have always loved fall clean-up time and the instant gratification you get from making the property look great one last time before it is blanketed in snow.
Step one is raking. Step two is raking. Step three is raking some more.
After building 50+ piles of leaves around the cabins and fields I went to work transferring them to tarps and dragging those tarps to the woods to dump. The whole ordeal only took about 20 hours over three days and now the place looks great just in time for Thanksgiving.
Fall clean-up is just one aspect of getting the property ready for the winter. Here is everything else I have done!
- 'Winterize' the pipes - because most of the buildings at camp are not heated we have to drain all of the water pipes, toilets, sinks, etc. That requires going under each cabin with an air compressor, blowing out the lines, and using a bit of antifreeze to make sure there is no water trapped anywhere that could freeze and break the pipes.
- Deactivate the fire alarm system - we have a state of the art fire alarm system in our cabins and buildings but it has to be turned off for the year when we are not around all of the time. This was fairly straightforward after reading the manual and inspecting some diagrams. I had to disconnect the back-up batteries and the turn off the electrical circuit powering the system.
- Pull in the docks - our fantastic deep-water docks cannot stay in the lake all winter so we have to disassemble and remove them from the water. There are two large sections that we detach and float to the marina to be hauled on land for storage. The last piece we manually pull up onto the beach.
- Storage - everything from the outside gets moved in. That includes picnic tables, sports equipment, chairs, paddleboards, etc.
- Winterize and store the boat - You cannot just plop the boat on land and leave it until the spring. Because the engine uses lake water for cooling it needs to be drained and flushed or else trapped water could freeze and burst portions of the engine. We also have six ballast tanks and bags that fill with water to create our epic wakes which have to be flushed with antifreeze as well. This year the boat is being stored indoors so no shrink-wrapping!
I will post more pictures throughout the winter! Happy Thanksgiving!
-Evan