above is an aerial view of our pond. out of frame at the top is our main house, in the bottom left is the Hacker House.  i wanted to make it easy to travel between the buildings so the first step was building a bridge.

next we needed to tame the rough stretch of land that sits outside our fenced pastures.

site preparation
with Billy's assistance ($75 /hour) we improved the grading and took out some trees in this area.

path design
i'm really proud of the railroad tie border we installed around our pond so i decided to repeat that strategy here. i bought 44 ties for $1,077.12. we laid those out with the tractor, shovels, and a lot of sweat.

i also bought 20 foot lengths of rebar ($127.30 for 10x bars), which we cut into 2 foot pieces with my angle grinder. we drove 2x into each tie, which was a wise decision considering some issues we (almost) experienced later with heavy rain.

next we put down garden fabric to deter weeds or grass from growing up into the path. this was ~$275 for 250 feet and went down easy. it came with several thin metal stakes which helped keep it down tight around the side edges.

finally i bought red slate rock. about a half truckload for $2944.75. this was easy to spread and gave the whole area a fresh coat of paint.

final touches
i extended the path 16 feet further than the photo above and we added 2x culvert pipes to assist with drainage from the elevated pastures on the left side. i took this photo just a few seconds before my company TRMNL went viral on YouTube, changing the trajectory of my entire year.

with everything i could do out of the way, we brought in landscaping pros ($5,640) to further grade and install sod on the hillside. here's their tidy work.

and here's the fresh grass. all of this was done in a single day.

all in this project took 3.5 months. it was on the slower side but turned out great.