27 September 2019

Nate got here just before 9 and we continued where the wall building left off yesterday.  Tammy and Jake arrived late morning to join in the fun.  Shortly thereafter, Dave Todd, our across-the-road neighbor, came over to tell Tammy that the D&F Paving stone and gravel pit was again selling to other contractors.  Tammy called the pit and, after some pleading, was allowed to buy a load of (somewhat dirty) A-stone, which Nate promptly went to fetch.  At lunch time, my wall building career came to an end (at least for this season), as the afternoon had to be spent loading Delores for our annual logging trip, which starts tomorrow.  At quitting time for this week, another 84 feet of stone wall was complete, bringing the two week total to 179 feet constructed; only 133½ feet to go.  The lake level now is 13½ inches below the top of our dock and the lake temperature still is a very swimmable 64°F.

26 September 2019

You’ll recall (I’m sure!) that on 5 February 2016 Jim Ploof moved a mountain of “excess” rocks from by the house out to what became three large piles on the edge of the woods by the road.  We used up the first pile building the stone walls along the south side of the driveway and southwards along the road.  Much of the second pile was used earlier this week.  However, as of yesterday, if the wall along the road is built any further northwards, access to the second pile will be blocked. So, when Nate appeared today at 8:30, I was busy moving the rest of that second pile from in the woods to the road side of where the wall will be built.  Nate fired up Tammy’s Kubota and we attacked the pile in concert, salvaging several bucket-loads of prime topsoil, which we used to backfill behind the wall on the north side of the driveway.  That mostly done, Nate and I continued building wall… ever higher, ever longer.  Tammy and Jake pulled in mid-morning and went to work building the gravestone steps outside the Shop door.  Shortly after they finished that job, it started to sprinkle; then it started to rain.  Time for lunch!  By the time lunch was over the rain she was a pouring!  So Tammy and her crew packed up their tools and the extra gravestones, then departed, as hoisting heavy, slippery rocks onto a stone wall is simply a great way to get hurt.  Since I had a raincoat on (and am not too bright), I then spent a delightful (sic) hour completely cleaning up the area where rock pile #2 had been.  After that, I gave the Kubota a much-needed hose bath and headed for the showers myself.

25 September 2019

Found, when I opened up the barn this morning, that Tammy and her guys had not only gotten soaked yesterday, they also had gotten VERY muddy, as evidenced by the condition of my Kubota.  Tammy’s machine, in contrast, was fairly clean, having been left outside in the rain last night.  She and her guys got here about 8:30.  We spent the morning building the steps for the barn’s people door.  Those steps, built from the 2′ x 1′ x 4″ gravestones Nate retrieved the other day, span a linear distance of 6 feet and have a vertical rise of 20 inches plus ¾″ of additional rise due to pitching the stones ⅛″ per foot for drainage.  As the stones stack on top of one another to form the steps, obviously we started with the stones furthest from the barn, building upwards towards the building.  Equally obvious, placing that first stone precisely in the right spot was critical to the steps reaching the door threshold perfectly.  Enter the pro from Goshen, Ms. Tammy Walsh, whose magnificent craftsmanship resulted in the top stones on the steps sliding under the threshold with less than ¹/₃₂″ of gap.  WOW!!!!  We then moved around to the backyard in order to build steps for the Shop’s exterior door, coming up one plastic pail short of the drainage stone needed for the base of those steps.  So back to wall building we did go.  By the end of the day (1) we had the wall along the north side of the driveway complete except for two capstones, (2) 20 feet of the wall base along Lake Dunmore Road was done, and (3) we all fully understood why one uses A-stone vice 6″ minus to fill the inside of the walls… what a pain in the rear it is working with the latter.

 

24 September 2019

While Chree and I were off gallivanting around Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire (on a tour sponsored by our bank, during which we did see the mother of all retaining walls), Tammy, Nate, and Jake continued wall building.  Obvious once the wall on the south side of the driveway was built, the monster boulder that defines the wall corner at the northeast corner of the driveway was too high and too close to the driveway.  Using her Kubota, Tammy was able to reposition and reorient that critter to match its counterpart on the other side.  That she was able to accomplish that feat is truly surprising given how Bob LaPorte struggled with that same rock with his much bigger backhoe.  The team then built quite a bit of the wall between that boulder and the oak tree before getting thoroughly soaked by a rainsquall that hit just before quitting time.  Unfortunately, in spite of going to three different stone pits, Nate was unable to get another load of A-stone, and had to settle for 6″minus crushed rock… which is twice as large.

23 September 2019

What a day!  Started out without Tammy and crew… which was not expected.  About 10:30, while solo wall building, Fran Viko (Tammy’s partner) showed up, bringing news that the Lapidus’ needed some urgent help.  [Later got the voicemails Merry had left on both my home and cell phones.]  Upon returning to Fern Lake a couple hours later, found Tammy and Jake continuing where I had left off.  Nate arrived an hour later (he was mowing lawns all morning) and was immediately dispatched to the local gravel pit for another load of desperately needed A-stone… which the pit owner (D&F Paving, yes, the same company who did a great job laying our asphalt driveway and then wanted to charge me triple a reasonable price to sealcoat the asphalt last year) closed to other contractors as of today.  Grrrrr!  So Tammy sent Nate down to RMG in Castleton to pick up a pallet of Government-rejected military gravestones which we will use to build steps into the barn and shop.  When Nate returned (amazingly, given how the day was going) with the gravestones, Tammy sent him up to the Carrara Concrete facility in East Middlebury, ‘cause they have huge stockpiles of crushed stone.  Nate got there just before 4; they closed at 3:30.  Double grrrr!  In spite of all the drama, we got 24 feet of the wall along the north side of the driveway completed.  Over the weekend and today, many, many people stopped by to complement the beauty of the wall finished thus far.  Go team!

20 September 2019

Worked a few hours this morning hand raking the area between Lake Dunmore Road and our beautiful new stone wall.  Removed a full Kubota bucket load of small rocks and the glass from many broken beer bottles, ‘cause we all know just how much fun it is to motor down the highway at a zillion miles an hour and toss your empty out the window onto a stone wall.  Such a great sound that makes!  Chree acquiesced to using the stone from a tumble down wall that is deep in the woods on our property between our driveway and Lapidus’ driveway, once all the other stockpiles are exhausted.  Fingers crossed that that will give us enough to complete the wall along the road!  Mr. Jonsered and I spent some quality time cutting dead limbs in that area to create a tractor-worthy access route.  As one limb came down, rather than let it hit me on my hardhat protected head, I fended it off with my bare arm.  Predictable result.  Tammy and Jake arrived at noon, having been seriously detained by another client.  During the afternoon, we started work on the stone wall along the north side of the driveway, getting 20 feet of the base course laid down.  Tammy’s Kubota being off on another job with Nate today, she used mine to move material around.  Afterwards, she offered to trade me her Kubota (2,070 hours on the meter), plus the cost of this job, for my Kubota (480 hours).  I politely declined…

 

19 September 2019

The Goshen Mountain Landscaping crew arrived about 8:30.  Tammy and Jake worked until lunch putting the front walkway back together… even more beautifully arranged than the original.  Now that the slate is resting on a proper compacted stone and stone dust base and sloped to drain back towards the driveway, we expect it to last much longer than the first attempt.  While that was being accomplished, Nate and I continued work on the stone wall along the road south of the driveway.  After lunch, Tammy, Jake, and I finished that section.  In four days of effort, we have completed 95 feet of wall, or about 28% of what needs to be constructed.  Doing the math, building the entire wall will take about 14 work days.  The bad news: both Tammy and I are convinced that there isn’t enough stone for what is planned in what I thought were our vast stockpiles.