Saturday, April 12, 2014

Day 6: Growing Grass

Saturday

Today was the last day for the excavators to be out working on the driveway. They touched up a few spots for a couple hours. It looks really nice, and I'm pleased with their work. While they were there, Steve had them dig a small pond in the back of his lot. We're hoping it fills up soon!


I also cleared a place for the electrical transformer to go. Reed helped by driving the stake from PCEC into the spot to mark it for the workers.

The big event of the day was planting the pasture seed. Steve had borrowed a seeder from one friend and a tractor from another. We're blessed to have good friends to loan equipment to amateurs like ourselves. He had bought pasture seed from the local co-op, and we were ready to go to work. The seeder took a little effort to get it adjusted just right.



Once we got everything lined up with the tractor and seeder, we filled up the seeder hopper and Steve seeded his pasture. The seeder is basically a heavy roller with spikes on it, with two smaller spiked rollers in front of it. There is a hopper above the rollers with a small auger that trickles seeds out onto the rollers. The rollers disturb the earth, allowing the seeds to fall into soil, rather than just fall on top of it. Steve did about 8 acres behind his place with around 200 lbs of seed. He had some help.


After Steve finished, it was my turn on the tractor. I did about 8 acres with 250 lbs of seed. I started at 7:00 PM and went until 9:30 PM. By the time I finished it was pretty dark and the front tractor lights were out, so my lines might not have been the straightest. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so we were hoping to get the seed down before the rain hit. I have about 2 more acres to go, but we ran out of seed.




I also finished the last 10 ft of fence repair. Reed was a big help with this small project. We had to clear the brush next to the corner post that we set on Wednesday and then tie a piece of goat fence from the corner post to the next line of fence heading south. I pounded in another steel post, and Reed got to see a manual post driver for the first time. He was pretty impressed.

In between these tasks I cleared out some brush from the front part area. It had a lot of downed limbs and thorn bushes, so it was slow going.The kids helped by picking up sticks and tossing them onto a future burn pile. They worked hard, avoiding the thorn bushes and locust tree branches. Will wasn't into picking up sticks, so I had him pick up big gravel rocks along the side of the road and throw them back onto the road. This worked pretty well, until he started throwing them over the road. After a bit of retraining, he did a pretty good job, until he decided that drawing in the dirt was more fun.


Somewhere in the evening, we took a quick break and had a picnic dinner. It was our first meal at the new house, so to speak. We even walked to where the dining room will be to make it official.



Daily Stats:

Work done: touched up driveway, finished fence, trimmed front park area, planted pasture seed
Hours worked (me): 8.5
Hours worked (friends/family): 6 (Steve, Reed, Emmy, Abby, Will)
Hours worked (contractor estimate): 8
Contractor: Grishm Farm and Construction
Materials used: 24" x 20' doubled 

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