An old railroad village on mixed ground, with sidewalk rules of its own.
The Farwell City Company laid Farwell out along the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad, and the village was Clare County's first county seat until the seat moved to Harrison in 1879. The houses still lean old. ACS 2024 figures count about 449 homes in the village with a median build year of 1973. Roughly 30 percent went up before 1960, and fewer than one in ten since 2000. That makes most Farwell concrete work replacement work: a heaved walk, a tired garage floor, an approach that has broken up, or a basement wall that is showing its age.
The ground here changes from lot to lot. USDA soil maps put Graycalm sand and Montcalm loamy sand on most of the higher ground around the village, and both drain fast. Low spots are another story. Markey muck covers about a tenth of the mapped area, and NRCS describes it as very poorly drained, with water at or near the surface from November through June in most years. Onekama loam on the till carries a subsoil of 35 to 50 percent clay that drains slowly. When we excavate and hit muck or wet clay, it comes out and compacted gravel goes back in before any form is set.
Which office you deal with depends on the address. Inside village limits, the Village of Farwell handles zoning and Clare County's building department handles building permits. Out in Surrey Township, the township runs its own building department instead. Sidewalks have their own village ordinance, adopted in 1993. It calls for a written permit before anyone repairs or installs a walk, a width of at least four and a half feet, a start 18 inches off the property line, a slope of a quarter inch per foot up from the curb, and no pour until the village inspector has checked the forms.
Water moves through town as well. The south branch of the Tobacco River, with its Mill Pond, runs through the village, and on July 14, 1998, NOAA logged flooded roadways around Farwell after radar estimated nearly 3.5 inches of rain in a single hour. That is one reason we lay drain tile before backfilling a foundation wall. Under Michigan's residential code, exterior footings go 42 inches below grade unless the building official says otherwise. M-115 crosses the village as a state trunkline, so a new approach onto it involves MDOT, while a drive onto a county road goes through the Clare County Road Commission.
What Farwell concrete runs into
- Sidewalk panels that must meet the village's 1993 width, setback and slope rules when replaced.
- Pockets of Markey muck that hold water near the surface from November through June.
- Onekama clay subsoil that drains slowly, so a wet base can freeze under walks and pads.
- Sidewalk forms the village inspector has to approve before any concrete is poured.
- New approaches onto M-115, a state trunkline where MDOT controls the right-of-way.
- Low, wet lots where a foundation wall needs drain tile laid before backfill.
