9.30.2024

The morning was kind of discombobulated - Jim first made some calls to reserve the auger and then the trailer for tomorrow.  But then his phone wouldn't work, showed SOS and would only make emergency calls.  My mom's phone was the same way, but mine was fine.  After doing some investigating, we discovered that Verizon had a huge outage, so while that made us feel better, you do realize that you are dependent on them for some things.  We were just glad Jim was able to make his phone calls and reservations right before.  Service was restored about 6 hours later.

Then around noon, I headed out to go to the store for a few things.  Timing is everything - they were just doing our apron and sides of the road.  So I just came back up. 

I went back out at the end of the day, and everything was done and looked beautiful, including new lines on the road...

The view from the other side.  It's still amazing to us that they do this kind of roadwork when there are two houses on this stretch of the road in the township.  And the roads appeared to be in good condition!

This afternoon, Jim wanted to move a couple more brick blocks.  First as another pallet with stray bricks; thankfully this one stayed together too...

We're about out of room on our gravel and until we get another delivery, Jim is making a temporary stashing point for the bricks.  He flattened out this area and put a tarp down...

Working on the next block...

This was probably the easiest one so far...

Putting it back in the woods...

Trying to fix the next block...

Then loading it up on the forks...

Placing it on the tarp...

Then it was time for more stone wall work.  Jim scooped up a bucketful of rocks from our pile...

And brought them over to the wall...

We had a bunch of stray rocks off to the side that we needed to move so that Jim could work on this part of the wall, so he brought the Bobcat up the incline and scooted them out of the way.

Then he brought the excavator up - the incline may not look like much in the picture, but it's scary to watch these big machines go up hills!

Moving some rocks to get closer...

Scraping for the base trench...

Then placing some big rocks...

You can see the original base rocks of the wall - it's huge!  It makes us feel good that we are restoring it.

Moving some rocks...

End-of-the-day picture...definitely looking good!

High 70.9/Low 52.8 - beautiful!

9.29.2024

When I went outside after lunch, I was so surprised to see how beautiful the wall looked just after Jim pulled back all the dirt and vegetation that had overtaken it....

Our first job today was to stake out the shed position and mark where Jim wants to drill for posts...

Stakes in place (you have to look close because everything is the same color!)...

Jim used some marking paint to mark the locations as well...

After that was done, Jim wanted to move another brick block.  You can see that this one had a whole column collapse, so Jim removed those bricks...

Then he was able to grab the block...

And get it moved out...

Then he had to try and rebuild it, plus there were middle ones that had collapsed as well...

But he got it and moved it back to our stash...

Then we went back to do some work on the rock wall.  First, Jim trimmed the area...

Moving more vegetation away...

Then using the excavator to move some of the rocks we had thrown in this area out of the way...

He dug a basic trench for the wall in this area...

You can see this pine tree growing in front of the wall, but with it there, Jim couldn't get the excavator close enough to the wall.  So he dug a spot below the wall...

Dug up the tree...

And planted it in the hole...

When they timbered this area before we bought the lot, they pushed over the wall in places to get at trees.  So Jim is scooping up some of the old rocks and moving them back in place...

Moving more rocks...

This was a cool big, flat rock...

We're so excited at how it's taking its former shape - it looks amazing!

High 70.4/Low 58.3

9.28.2024

This morning, Jim headed to the rental store to hopefully reserve an auger and compactor for Monday.  But they were closed!  Equipment rental companies usually do their biggest business on the weekends when homeowners are off work, so we aren't sure what was going on.  He'll have to call Monday.

After lunch, we decided to try and move more brick blocks.  This is the one that had collapsed in the middle, but Jim worked and got it back together... 

Moving it to the spot in the woods...

Working on the next block - these side ones had really sunk into the ground...

He got it loaded up...

And moved back...

Since that one went well, Jim decided to do one more...

Setting it in the back...

This little fir tree was growing into the rock wall, so it needed to be moved.  Jim brought the excavator over...

And dug it out...

He moved it over to the side for now, along with another one he dug up...

It left a big hole in the rock wall, but it's fascinating to see all the layers in this wall from the 1800s...

Jim used the excavator to clean up the edges of the wall...

And moved some of the "uglier" rocks into the hole left from the tree, so that we can keep the old, weathered ones on top...

High 76/Low 54.7