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Progress on the terracing

This may come as a surprise; it turns out that it is shockingly hard work to build a 130′ long, 3′ high dry stack rock wall. Digging the trench for the footer alone was a massive task; it had to be around 2.5′ wide and 2′ deep and we dug it all by hand. Then 6″ of 3/4 clean gravel was added to the bottom (I used the tractor for most of this!) for drainage. We still haven’t finished setting the first course of rock. We have about 40 tons of one-man granite rocks piled in the front yard waiting to go into place although my attention has been taken lately with some interior remodeling and leak-fixing so this project has been sitting idle. Here are a few pictures of the beginnings:

Remaking the Garden – Terracing

After spending some time tearing down the small, older garden (while preserving the old grape vine) I became frustrated with how hilly (not to mention rocky!) our yard is and so I decided to terrace it.

The thinking is to build a natural stone retaining wall and then fill in the low spots with dirt brought in from outside. The first step is to stake out the terraced area and then run level twine between the stakes to get a sense of how high the retaining walls would need to be and how much dirt to bring in. Here’s the surveying work in progress:

It seems that we’ll need about 1,000 yards of soil to level this up. And lots and lots of rocks!

Making Hay Part 2

The plan has been to turn this part of the pasture into a hay field so we can harvest and store it and our sheep will have healthy food to eat next winter.

The first step is to set up the tractor with the plow:

And then, start plowing:

This can actually be a little bit of a nerve-wracking process, especially on very hilly and uneven ground like our pasture. The reason is that after making the first furrow it’s necessary to put the two tractor tires on the right side into that furrow to do the second one and then keep repeating this process. This means the tractor can be titling to one side in a fairly dramatic fashion at times. The last thing I want to do is roll the tractor.

So after a couple of hours I had this done.

And then a bit later, all done:

Next step is that my sister will be planting the hay seeds. Apparently it’s some kind of mix from a local seed company… I’ll update with more information about that later.