This weekend we didn’t expect anything to happen. In general I don’t think Wayne works weekends unless they are behind and need to hit a deadline, which is normal I would think. We didn’t plan to go out to the land Saturday, although there is still plenty of work we plan to do in the front tree line as we take down the overgrown honeysuckle and we probably need to take what we have removed already and do a bonfire to get rid of it. We were (I was anyway) tired of being out there on the land most weekends as we have gotten behind at times doing normal things we need to do as a family.
However, we planned to go out on Sunday to readjust the camera. We have simply been using the strap that comes with the camera to wrap around a tree and it seems to let the camera ‘fall down’ a little bit and angle more towards the dirt. At a minimum we needed to move the strap up by at least a foot and honestly we didn’t know if that would be good long term either so we went in search of a mount that you could screw into the tree. We found a pretty cheap but functional one at Field and Stream/Dicks Sporting Goods on Saturday, so we took our rechargeable drill with us to reposition the camera.
I am loving the quick test shots we took from the camera. You will be able to see the entirety of the roof and the field of view seems to be wider as well from this angle. The only downside with repositioning is there will be a slight hiccup in the full time lapse from the 2 positions, but then again we had it on a totally different tree at the beginning when we were clearing the meadow so there will be a much more significant hiccup in the over all time lapse at the beginning anyway.
This position also makes the camera more secure. It blends in more without the strap around the tree and you need a ladder to access it. It would be virtually undetectable if it wasn’t for the fact that we have a board at the bottom of the tree to sit the ladder on because the ladder sinks into the ground otherwise.
The position changed required a little more tree pruning to keep branches out of the field of view, but it didn’t take long and I imagine as the tree grows in summer we may have to do a little upkeep to maintain a clear picture.
The other nice thing about this mount is that it can be angled up and down if need be fairly easily without moving the overall mount. If we find the roof area still isn’t completely in the frame, we can simply loosen a wingnut and angle it higher. We honestly wish we would have found this mount from the beginning and I highly recommend skipping the strap and getting a mount instead, even if it means drilling into the tree.
Anyone looking for a reasonably priced trail cam that does time lapse mode, here is what we are using. We are also using lithium batteries to minimize how often we have to move the camera. They are holding up well. We chose this sd card and it’s all going to depend on how often you set your camera to take pictures on what size you get. We are thinking of getting a 2nd sd card so we can just swap them out each time we want to get the files instead of what we are doing currently which require us hooking up an adapter to our phones, copying the files while standing on the ladder and then putting the card back in the camera.
I remembered to bring my selfie stick today and got a pic of us all checking out the footers. They are dry now and we were sure to test them out before letting Creative Kid go down in the pit to check it all out. Of course Creative Kid then had to have some fun with the selfie stick. He loves taking pictures.
The ground had dried out significantly from when we were there on Friday, but in this you can see the front left pit that will become one of the sump pump wells is still full of water. The other one that was in the back right corner was filled in when they set the footer frames. I can only assume it was not in the space they needed it to be and that the sump pump well will have to be re-dug out in it’s proper placement.
So remember I said I didn’t expect any work to be done over the weekend? Well I don’t know what they were verifying, but when we came back home and plugged the timelapse files into the viewer program we use from the camera manufacturer, we caught just a bit of surveying equipment out there on Saturday. Nothing seems to have been changed since Friday, but obviously someone went out there to do something administrative on Saturday to verify locations/heights.
Hopefully this week will see the poured walls go up. When we originally moved our date from Thursday until Monday, our Field Manager said they were backed up about 10 work days, but when we dig day he said the back up was better. We had really good weather at the end of the previous week so I imagine they were able to play a little catch up. I’m not certain when they will actually be able to do it, or if they will want to pour that last post footer before the walls or if they will do it when the concrete truck is out there for the walls, and I’m sure they have to remove the footer frames as well.
We’ll see what this new week brings! Happy Monday everyone. 🙂
Thanks for reading!
