16 October 2019
About 9:30, while I was busy picking another two
full bucket-loads of rocks out of the area between the new stone wall and Lake
Dunmore Road, Tammy and Geryll stopped by.
After discussing next steps, the two ladies left again, returning an
hour later with 12 bales of hay. They
then left again, purportedly to go into Middlebury to acquire a hydro seeder (a
device that sprays water, grass seed, and hay onto an area to be planted). That trip, I thought, should have taken them
an hour or so. At 1:30 Nate showed up to
take away Tammy’s Kubota, saying that he had just talked to his boss, who was
in Middlebury, and should be back here “any minute now”. At 2:00 Jake arrived, bringing with him a small
broadcast seeder. Finally, at 2:30 Tammy
and Geryll returned, bearing a 25 pound bag of grass seed, a hay mulcher /
sprayer (not a hydro seeder) from Taylor Rental, a half yard of topsoil,
and a tale of woe involving two flat tires on Tammy’s dump trailer. In the next hour we spread the topsoil (could
have used a full yard, easily), spread the grass seed, and mulched Tammy and
the seeded area with hay.
15 October 2019
Tammy and her guys got here at 9; Geryll
Robinson (just back from a two-week vacation in Europe) arrived an hour
later. Tammy brought me a copy of the
Rutland Herald from Wednesday, 2 October, the front page of which had a nice
picture of the stone wall being built, plus a short blurb about who was doing
the work (Tammy, Nate, and Jake) from Goshen Mountain Landscaping. Nate continued building the wall front and
back faces; Jake dumped stone rubble into the wall void as needed, then he and
Geryll began the arduous task of cleaning the work area of all the “extra”
stone; Tammy and I continued putting caps on the wall top. By early afternoon the wall was complete,
including a short extension of the Lapidus’ existing wall (built by Tammy years
ago) so that the Lapidus’ and Perkins’ walls meet at the property corner
stake. Then the fun began in
earnest! Tammy used our Kubotas (one at
time; she’s good but…) to aggressively grade and groom the area between the
stone wall and road in preparation for topsoil and grass seed. Let’s just say that us grunts (Geryll, Nate,
Jake, and I… and grunt we did do) removed many, many tons of stone stirred
up in the aftermath of Tammy’s efforts. Back breaking work! All that “extra” stone was dumped into a
once-hollow just off the driveway.
Tammy, Jake, and I finished the final topsoil spreading at 6:15. Don’t know about the others, but I’m PDK
(translation: pretty darn knackered) tonight.
14 October 2019
Tammy, Nate, and Jake arrived about 8:30 to
continue wall building. While the two
guys concentrated on building the outer wall faces and filling the inner void
with stone rubble, Tammy and I scavenged and placed the top caps. By the end of the day, all but 20 feet of the
wall was complete… and looking PDG (translation: pretty darn good).
11 October 2019
Returned to Fern Lake with all fingers, toes,
other body parts, Delores, and the Kubota intact after two weeks of working in
the woods. Got out 7 cords of saw logs
and 6 cords of firewood, the sale of which should at least partially assuage
the trials and tribulations endured. On
a very positive note: there were only a few occasions when the Kubota was
balanced just on three wheels.
Unfortunately, those occasions caused more than a few strands of Chree’s
hair to turn gray. Oh, well! Expected to find the stone wall complete, or
the Goshen Mountain Landscaping crew hard at work. While the wall was much further along than
when we left, there was still about 40 feet left to go… and Tammy’s crew was
among the missing. A good sign: there
was a dump truck load of beautiful topsoil deposited by the wall at the top of
the driveway. Tammy did call later that
afternoon to explain her absence… and promised to be here Monday morning to
continue work.
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.
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