Excavation: Drainage

On Friday, August 11th an enormous John Deere excavator was delivered on a flatbed and parked on the farmhouse lawn.

On Monday, the farm’s pristine first field felt its toothy bite. 

Water proved to be our nemesis yet again. Rob Drew, the operator of Drew Construction had to dig a giant u-shaped trench 10 feet deep around the house site and lay a French drain with two outlets down the hill to release water from the saturated soil.

It took days to for the water to drain away. In the meantime, dump trucks filled with tons of aggregate – a rocky sandy mix – came and fortified our dirt driveway so that the heavy machinery would not sink in the mire.

Rob and his son, Dillon, laid pipe, covered it with gravel and then buried it with clay, leaving the topsoil piled it in mounds, creating a moonscape. And then they helped us get started on rebuilding an old stone wall by removing weed trees that had grown up over the years, scattering the rounded boulders.