OK, so last week I went out on Saturday and worked for a few hours, spreading road base. It was the hottest part of the day and wiped me out. Summer is definitely here now and I'm too old to work with the sun beating down on me. I felt like I didn't get much accomplished but Todd said he could tell that I worked on it.
Today, I met him out there. He was working on the driveway so I joined him. I didn't bring my wheelbarrow with me so we were tossing it by the shovel full. We finished raking it and it was '
OK'. I'll go out later on with a chain harrow and level it out more, but it doesn't look too bad. 22 cubic yards of road base got us about 100'. I figure another 12 double loads to get the road all the way back to the main part of the building site. Well, after all it's only a quarter of a mile to where we want to build our cabin.
So...once we were done with the driveway, the real fun was about to begin. I had a 12' steel tube gate in the back of my
Silverado. We got busy and cut fence posts from the cedar trees we cut down a few weeks ago. I held up the gate; so we could see where to dig and we got busy.
I figured, "I have a post hole digger. The ground is soft dirt. This should be simple." Boy was I
delusional. You tell me, does that ground "look" soft? What was I thinking? The ground was as hard as dirt and clay can ever get. It was like
trying to dig through rock. I tried to use my mattock to bust up the dirt but instead, bent it right over as if I was hitting it against steel. I was expecting my 8 year old post hole digger to break but it held up through the abuse I was giving it.
About an hour later, I hadn't made much progress other than to wear myself out. Todd hadn't made much progress on the other side of the driveway either. I was ready to quit and go get a gas auger but Todd didn't want to give up, so...I kept digging...stopped for a quick bite of lunch and dug some more...Did I mention that we started on this around 9am?
Eventually, I must have gotten my second wind because I finished up both holes and we planted the posts and hung the gate...sort of. I forgot to bring a drill to make holes for the mounting hardware.
Ooops! ;) So...we packed it in around 1:00pm, give or take (I stuck around afterwards and raked the driveway a little before leaving), and called it a day. What do you think? Is it starting to look more like it should?
I figured, "I have a post hole digger. The ground is soft dirt. This should be simple." Boy was I delusional. You tell me, does that ground "look" soft? What was I thinking? The ground was as hard as dirt and clay can ever get. It was like trying to dig through rock. I tried to use my mattock to bust up the dirt but instead, bent it right over as if I was hitting it against steel. I was expecting my 8 year old post hole digger to break but it held up through the abuse I was giving it.
About an hour later, I hadn't made much progress other than to wear myself out. Todd hadn't made much progress on the other side of the driveway either. I was ready to quit and go get a gas auger but Todd didn't want to give up, so...I kept digging...stopped for a quick bite of lunch and dug some more...Did I mention that we started on this around 9am?
Eventually, I must have gotten my second wind because I finished up both holes and we planted the posts and hung the gate...sort of. I forgot to bring a drill to make holes for the mounting hardware. Ooops! ;) So...we packed it in around 1:00pm, give or take (I stuck around afterwards and raked the driveway a little before leaving), and called it a day. What do you think? Is it starting to look more like it should?
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