This is the last post in my four part series. If you didn’t catch the first three, here are the links to each:
Vacation this week! And guess what we did? Built the rock wall we’ve been wanting. It was 2007 when Lesly was married that we wanted the rock wall and landscaped pathway. We considered purchasing the rock for the wall, but finances we’ re tight so the wall had to wait.
This year my husband got tired of waiting on the finances and decided to just get the rock off our lower ten acres. Now you might be thinking, why didn’t we just do this before. Well, there is a lot of work that goes into this process.
We had to borrow my father in-law’s tractor (which he didn’t have two years ago) and our neighbor Randy’s flatbed trailer. The road to get to the lower ten is an old logging road and has since grown over with all kinds of little and big bushes. Les had to take the chainsaw and cut a path so he could get the tractor and trailer back far enough into the woods to get to the rocks. This took half a day in itself.
Have you had to dig rocks before? It was Les, me, and Jaryd (our 10 year old son) who headed down Saturday morning about 9:30 and it was already getting hot. I realized about half way down I had not drunk any water, just my morning latte. After Les had the tractor stopped Jaryd and I jumped off and Les unhooked the trailer.
I was given the call to find rocks, big rocks. So I grabbed the big crow bar and tried to dig rock. After a few minuets I realized that crow bar was REALLY heavy and I was getting light headed. I decide to get the shovel instead, this worked much better. I also realized the soft fluffy yellow work gloves I’d picked out were adding at least five degrees to my body temperature; off they came!
Next thing I knew Jaryd was pulling at his shirt because he had just got stung by a hornet. We have no water, nothing. So… I had him rub it with spit and said do it again if it kept hurting. Back to work we went.
Jaryd’s job was to unhook the rocks when Les brought them to the trailer. Mine was to dig rocks, rope the rocks, and then hook them to the chain so Les could haul them to the trailer with the tractor. Les helped me with the roping and chaining; some of the rocks were very heavy and very big.
We were at this for about an hour when the rope with the metal hooks on it broke from the weight of the rock, flew through the air and missed Les’ head by about three inches. We were hot, thirsty, sweaty, filthy, and bee stung; time to go home. We still have at least one more weekend of rock gathering and wall building. It looks totally amazing and I’m sure I’ll be glad we did it … someday.
Resting until next weekend… Teri 