A Weekend of Digging

After the Pooch Party, I met Greg out at our property. I had originally planned to stay the night, but it had been a while since I had actually stayed out there. We’ve finally gotten rid of all the mice, and we also made the bed much more comfortable by putting an actual mattress in the camper, so I decided it was time to give staying overnight another try.

When I got there, we got right to work.

We put up a string line and spray-painted the area where we were going to dig the drainfield. The drainfield needs to be 6 feet wide, 60 feet long and 3 feet deep.

That sounds pretty simple when you say it like that.

It wasn’t.

Greg had the excavator out there, so I told him he needed to teach me how to use it. Maybe if I learned, I could actually help more with some of this work instead of just standing around taking pictures. 😂

So he did.

I climbed into the excavator and started learning what all the different handles and controls did. It took me a minute to get the hang of everything, but I think I actually did pretty good! I dug out a hole that we’ll eventually put our distribution box in.

I may not be ready to take over the excavator full-time, but I didn’t completely destroy anything, so I’m counting that as a success.

After I’d had my turn in the excavator, we decided it was time for dinner. We made foil dinners, by the time we finished we still had some daylight left.

So, naturally, we went for a four-wheeler ride.

The weather was getting cooler and the leaves were just starting to change colors. It was one of those evenings where everything felt really nice. I absolutely love riding on the back of the four-wheeler with Greg. There’s something about being out there together, riding the trails with nowhere we really need to be.

When we got back, we took a shower, started a movie in the camper and eventually went to bed.

The next morning we got up and got right back to work.

It was pretty cold, so we started the day wearing layers. We even kind of matched. We both had on flannels and sweatpants, which I found amusing.

Greg ran the excavator and started digging the drainfield while I worked down in the pit. I was raking dirt, shoveling out areas and checking everything with the laser level to make sure we were getting it level and to the correct depth.

And then we discovered that the ground had other plans for us.

There is a lot of granite in the dirt, which meant we couldn’t just keep digging with the bucket. We had to switch the excavator over to the hammer and start chipping away at the granite.

Which was slow.

Really slow.

The hammer would break the granite into huge chunks, then we’d have to switch back to the bucket to dig those pieces out. Then we’d hit more granite, switch back to the hammer, break it up, switch back to the bucket…

You get the idea.

By about 2:00, I finally asked Greg if we could find some magic money somewhere and just pay someone to do this.

I was tired.

It’s a lot of work being down in that pit, raking and shoveling and leveling while Greg is running the excavator. And after doing it for hours, I was ready for someone else to take over.

I did manage to make it a couple more hours before I was officially done.

We finally called it quits around 4:00.

We had gotten about 40 feet of the 60 feet we needed.

I had been optimistic going into the weekend. I thought we’d get this whole drainfield dug and maybe even start working on the hole for the septic tank.

But no.

The dirt had other ideas.

Apparently our property has decided that every part of this septic project needs to be just a little harder than we expected.

We’re getting there, though.

Slowly.

He forgot his hat and when he saw what the wind had done to his hair this is the face I got. LOL

This van and camper have been here all summer. We think they might live here now.

A view from the other side of the giant house by us.

Greg serious does it all. He’s been working on sewing the canvas on our old pop up. I would help but I can’t even punch the needle through all that canvas.