This has been the season of the rocks! For two years we have been chipping away at the 2 yards of rock that we had delivered in order to fill our walls. In this one season, I would say we have used about 1.5 yards of that rock and have moved it from our front yard down into different areas of the back yard. It is awesome and motivating to see what the pile looked like at the end of April to what it looks like today. We are officially out! We have had to order another 2 yards to be delivered, which will come tomorrow.
The rock walls have been slow going for a few years now, mostly because putting the rocks into them are time consuming and finicky work. As I mentioned in my last post, we have adjusted the way we build our walls over the years, trying to streamline and make filling and building them more efficient. I think we have finally figured it out.
K and I have been putting off filling our newest wall because we assumed it would be time consuming, finicky, back aching work. It turns out our idea to use the chicken wire inside of the fencing wire to make it so that small rocks won’t fall through, was the key to making this a faster process. One section, even the shortest sections, would take about an hour to complete, with the taller sections taking longer. We filled the two smaller sections a few weeks ago and found it really easy to fill. For the most part we can dump the rock in and just adjust the odd area to ensure no big holes.
We were supposed to go camping this weekend, but the forecast was for rain, rain and more rain, so we decided to stay home and work between the showers. We managed to get two more sections filled and part of a third section before we ran out of rocks. Those 2.5 sections only took us about an hour and a half. It is fantastic. I don’t know if you can tell, but we are super EXCITED that this has become a much easier task with beautiful results.
Our plan is to fill the last few sections of the wall tomorrow when the rocks get delivered. Although they are the two biggest sections left, plus part of a third, it will likely be fairly quick to get done, then we can start digging and getting our next tier ready. This will make the landscaping of the one side so much faster. I told K that I would like the walls on the one side done by the end of fall this year so that we can get rid of our raised beds next spring and start growing right on the slope in the new beds we are building. That will give me the chance to build our privacy fence and beds along the back, making our yard just a little more private.
JK Building The Dream 