Rocks. You didn’t really think I was going to say dreams, did you? We have rocks, so many rocks in our field. Saturday and Sunday morning the 3 of us headed out to THF to try and make a dent in our rots-a-rocks.
The first thing that needed to be done was to get a batch of logs into the water tanks for a 4 hour soak. That was our timing plan. When they were done, we would be done.
Once that was set, we got started. Bless his heart, Don called to say he would be coming out too on Saturday. One more set of hands to help. Thank goodness. Then it was just pick up the rock, dump it into the trailer, head across the stream and unload them into their designated spot. Over and over; load after load.

You cannot really see the true conditions we were dealing with. The field had been plowed up quite nicely but it was muddy and the resulting ruts were a nightmare to deal with. I had my pedometer in my pocket and it counting my steps quite easily, but it was not taking into the consideration my struggle to step over and into each rut while carrying a load of rocks and keeping my balance. Over entire day on Saturday it said I walked 14,237 steps which is 5.5 miles. And it says I worked off 402 calories. Yeah right. Somebody needs to come up with a pedometer that not only tracks your steps, but the effort you are making. Carrying rocks should make your steps count for something more.
So we worked and worked some more. Ron’s plan was to use the rocks to fill in the muddy spot where we fill the water tank.

You can tell by the ruts that this was something we needed to deal with. Every time we filled the water tank, the area got drenched. Holding onto a small fire hose is not easy.  Not that I plan to do that again anytime soon.
It was cloudy on Saturday which gave us a good break from the heat. And we had a pretty good breeze both days. That helped a lot.

But Don had it right. After 5 minutes of rock picking, it just wasn’t fun anymore. Just hard work and lots of it. But we were making a dent in the road building effort. Though you could not see any dent in the field of rocks.

If we concentrated on the bigger rocks, the trailer filled up pretty fast.  But we had a whole lot more of the smaller ones.  Collecting them took  much longer but they were the right size for Ron’s road.

This was the biggest rock we pulled out of the field. Could not have done it without the 4 wheeler. I wrapped it like a Christmas present and Ron pulled it out. No good for the road, so we stashed it along side the road by the field. Close to another pile of rocks that someone else dug up and left hidden in the bushes. We really have to find someone who wants to buy these rocks from us.

By Sunday afternoon we had something to be proud of. Here is hoping that it does the trick and makes the watering process just a bit easier. We need a good solid day of rain in order to have it settle in nicely. And a few dozen trips over it with the 4 wheeler.

Jo, Sunday morning, standing in a field of despair. So many rocks.