15 April 2011

A sunny, mid-40’s day… perfect for hard manual labor.  Tammy Walsh and her Kubota B3200 loader/backhoe showed up shortly after 8.  First item on the agenda was to paw through the piles of rock that were deposited either side of the driveway out by VT 53 when this property was an active farm.  Even though my standards for what constituted a “good” building rock steadily declined over the morning, we only managed to fill the pickup twice with our gleanings.  Mind you, the Ranger is a ¼ ton pickup, but when the bed is loaded to the sideboards with rock there’s about ¾ ton on board… and the front wheels only make intermittent contact with the ground.  Also, with that kind of load you don’t back down the hill to the lower shed level… you sliiiiiiiide down.  Anything for a little excitement, I say.  Tammy found a rock that is the exact shape of Vermont… or New Hampshire, if you turn it upside down.  Rock picking done, Tammy and I set about the task of moving the half-dozen 200 – 500 pound rocks that had left their beds in the shed cellar hole excavation over the winter and cascaded down against the cement columns and rock walls.  Using the logging chain and her backhoe, we managed to get them back upslope enough for work on the walls to continue.  Hopefully they’ll stay where they were put for at least a couple of months.  Any bets????  After Tammy left, spent the balance of the afternoon, shovel in hand, removing all the dirt that had accompanied the rocks down slope when nobody was looking.  Used said dirt to fill in the exterior of the hole up to the top of the footers, making walking around the perimeter much easier.