We’ve been preoccupied with our wreath and garland business, forestry work, and travel for the last two months, so this blog post is a bit overdue.
Back in October, we took on a big Earth-moving project. The whole East side of the building had been in a bumpy incomplete state with seasonal dust bowls and mud pits. It needed some serious grading, a drainage system, several inches of base rock, and several inches of finishing gravel.
Before starting, Sam did some machine maintenance, including a full track replacement on the excavator. The rubber tracks were finally shot, so he ordered some new steel ones. They both have their advantages, but the steel tracks seemed more durable and appropriate for our typical forestry applications. And unlike rubber tracks, steel tracks don’t have a reputation of popping off easily while steering through mud. Sam has some experience with this, as we only use the excavator during the wetter half of the year (due to fire danger).
Sam swapped out the tracks and sprockets by himself with a little help from the crane. Some of you might recognize the old Christmas tree bailing winch pulling the new tracks on.
Buster, of course, supervised all of this. He occasionally let Smokey join him in the captain’s seat.
After a few days of rain, we were concerned it would be too muddy to work. But, the skies cleared by the time the excavator went back outside.
We couldn’t have asked for better conditions. The ground retained just enough moisture that we didn’t need to set up sprinklers for the dirt-moving project.
Normally, we could adjust our schedule around the weather if need be, but we had already reserved this John Deere 624P wheel loader for the week!
It might not look huge in these photos, but it felt like the Titanic, only with highly sensitive steering. It has articulated steering, which took some getting used to. Its bucket has about 5X the capacity of the bucket on our Case loader. The Deere was almost brand new and came equipped with a lot of bells and whistles, including a backup camera. Maneuvering this beast was a little out of my comfort zone, so I didn’t drive it much.
Luckily, I didn’t need to because Jackson was on his way! He helped us out for the whole week!
The first part of the project involved building a new section of the driveway to shuttle rocks up from the pit. Fortunately, there weren’t too many trees in the way of the path. Unfortunately, the new road was on a side-slope, so Sam and Jackson had to remove a lot of dirt to make a level road.
Jackson collected some rocks from the pit to spread over the new road.
Look at that! A new road, compacted and all. (I took this photo today, hence the snow.)
With the new road in place, Sam and Jackson could drive back and forth repeatedly without making a mess around the building. They began shaping the East side area. The ground needed to slope down and away from the building more. Jackson shaved off the high spots with the dozer and carried the excess dirt away with the loader.
Sam continued to mine rock from the pit to build up the low areas.
After a day or two of this, the whole area was close to final grade. It was time to install the drain.
Sam and Jackson began digging the 120 ft long trench for the drain pipe.
Unfortunately, work came to a halt when a propane line was hit. I was in the kitchen preparing lunch when Sam casually walked in to inform me that there would be no hot water for the day. No one thought to look through the photo album of buried pipe before digging…
We installed part of the French drain, first laying fabric down and making a cocoon around drain rock and 4″ perforated pipe. Then we held the fabric shut and sprinkled another layer of drain rock over everything.
The propane company arrived early the next morning. They were not impressed but repaired the broken lines quickly. Work continued. We completed the drain and were ready for massive amounts of rock moving!
To be continued…
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