Drivel : If I Knew Then What I Know Now, I Would Have.....

More gravel on the driveway. Everybody around here complains about this mistake. 

Would have leveled more land while the excavator was working here. Taking the tops off the highest rises and using the material to fill in the deepest holes would have given me a lot more usable pasture land. 

Would have made the perimeter fencing a higher priority. 

Would have started removing the eucalyptus trees from the very beginning. The latest windstorm has shown me that having weak trees on the farm is a big mistake, 

Would have placed planting orchard trees near the top of the work list at the very start. The orchard should have been planted during the very first year. 

Things I hear other people say.................

Would have purchased better and more land even if it cost more. -- Luckily we opted to spend everything we had, plus a tad more, to buy the best and most average land that we could find in our price range. 

Would have made a good workshop before trying to create the house. -- Luckily we bought a house shell, which gave us a dry place for our tools. Yes, we lived with our tools for years as we built the house around them. But that was ok.

Would have bought better quality tools even though more expensive. -- We made the decision to buy some good quality tools before moving here and shipped them over with us. While other people shipped over clothing, house furniture, kitchen stuff, we shipped tools instead.

Would have paid more attention to which way the bad weather came from. -- One of the first things we did was track the sun, record wind direction, keep rain & temperature records, etc. Thus we learned early on about how the weather would effect our building plans. 

Would have checked on what the neighbors were like before buying. -- We met just about everyone before buying. They all seemed weird and quite wacky, but generally ok. 

I would have built a smaller house. -- We purposely set out to build a small house. 600 square feet was our target but we discovered that we liked more space under a roof. Adding on is easier than finding out you built too much. 

One person told me that they would have bought a tractor with attachments, including a bucket, a scoop, a hammer, an auger, and a brushog. Initially I opted not to go that route. I wrestled with the idea of farm equipment and 12 years ago opted to avoid the big stuff. Looking back, the tractor with attachments might have been a wiser choice. Or at minimum, a skidsteer.