Farm Journal

Thoughts and images from life at Foster Road

Entry: August 21, 2009

Journal Entries

Buried Power

What’s a luxury and what’s a prudent investment? How many times have I, will I, ask that question during this project?

I will have an active workshop and studio, so having the capacity to run future equipment is very important. Service upgrade: Investment. But underground service? It costs much more and it works the same. Luxury?

Anyone who’s lived in the region for over a decade will remember the Labor Day Storm. Straight line winds took down thousands of trees. All across my neighborhood, 80-year old trees were pulled up by their roots and tossed across lawns, streets and houses like pick-up-sticks. A workmate told the harrowing story of a tree that shot through his window and impaled the pillow next to him in the bed. My street did not have power for a week, the lines wildly entangled in trees. The experience taught me one lesson, trees and power lines don’t mix.

Here it is, time to make a decision for my own property, and the impressive line of old hard maples that drape over front yard also looks like a headache begging to happen. So I’m doing now what I know I won’t do later, burying the cable.

Chances are, once I spring for these mechanicals upgrades, I won’t have money to do the beautiful finishes I long to do. But I know I’ll work on the details as resources permit, while the mechanicals I’ll just live with, and regret if I don’t do it right. So here’s to the gray conduit and tidy new panel, quite satisfying to a grown up like me.