Family, gardening, home, Kids, Uncategorized, work

Digging a Hole

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I can get really dirty when I’m working in the yard and putting in a new fence post this week made for TWO seriously dirty days.

The fence was initially installed in the end of April 1991, right after I moved in, so I didn’t have to take the dogs out on leashes six or seven times a day so they could do their business.  One of the fence posts was replaced years ago and the others have slowly deteriorated over time.  I have a huge black steel fence post “holder” keeping one up and my handy man did a serious MacGyver on another one last November when the ground was already frozen.  YA and I decided to replace the saggiest one and see what lessons we learned before attempting the MacGyvered one.

All the online advice talks about how hard it is to get the previous concrete out and they weren’t kidding.  The hole was humungous because we couldn’t get any leverage in a smaller hole.  We finally got down to where we needed to be and we measured the post and I sawed it off to the right height.  Then on Day 2 we got an ugly surprise; the very corner where there post needed to go had an old remnant of the initial fence post.  Believe me when I tell you it doesn’t take thousands of years for old wood to calcify.  It took an hour, a saw, a drill with 2 different bits, one dandelion digger that didn’t survive the ordeal and a hammer to finally clear that corner.

So the post is in, I’ve taken another super serious shower and some ibuprofen for my sore shoulders.  YA and I had lunch after we had finished and we both agreed that we learned a lesson that we could apply to the gate post – that we were hiring someone else to do it!

Any projects that you’ve gotten dirty doing?

 

51 thoughts on “Digging a Hole”

  1. Yes. Installing new flooring in the toilet rooms of the VFW Fargo. It required removal of multiple layers of existing vinyl and wood subfloor. Wood is food for all sorts of creepy, crawly, stinky thingys. But moisture is also needed. Now from where would “moisture” in a bars’ toilet rooms come?! Deeeegusting! I threw away those work clothes.

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  2. You can encounter all sorts of disgusting sludge when doing work on plumbing drains but probably the most disgusting was the times I rooted out my own sewer line to the street. I was going to say, at least it was our own sludge, but that’s probably not entirely accurate.

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    2. Eeww, eeww.

      In one of David Sedaris books he talks about having to assist his father in a similar job after David purposely flushed a cardboard toilet roll and clogged the family toilet. He did it again, and his dad made him pull out the roll. Eeww. Shudder.

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  3. I got full of deck stain the first time I was staining the pergola atop our deck. It was difficult to get between all the parts of the pergola, and the floor and verticals were no picnic, either. I got soaked with stain down to my underwear.

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  4. First I have to ask, what’s ” a serious MacGyver “. (I could no doubt look it up, but there will probably be a more interesting answer here.)

    Well, that last time I got dirty was the other day, deadheading and digging out weeds in the flower beds. But seriously dirty, I’ll have to think a bit and get back to you.

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      1. If you ever saw that show, MacGyver, you know that the main character takes all kinds of bits of stuff and fashions tools that he needs. So these days when something has been MacGyver’d, that means it’s been put together in a funny way out of things that you wouldn’t expect.

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        2. It’s a pretty old series, starring Richard Dean Anderson. MythBusters took up a lot of his inventions and showed that some of them weren’t even remotely feasible. But some were and the show was a lot of fun, up until the last season.

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      3. Macgyver was a TV series starring a hero who had exceptional skills at fixing problems and inventing devices. He was a sort of can-do mad scientist who never met a problem he couldn’t solve. (I say this in spite of not having seen the show. But that’s the general idea.)

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  5. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    Every year, Spring and Fall, there are a few days I wear my oldest clothes to either prepare the garden for the season, or to clean it up. If has been raining, that takes the dirt and makes it mud, which is even grimier. At the end of those work days I find all kinds of things in my pockets and underwear, and everything is smeared with dirt and mud.

    My late ex-father-in-law was a farmer. Bob was a red-headed, freckled Danish American. When harvest season arrived and he was combining, he would come in at night covered in grime, dust, and grain shards. He was unrecognizable because he was dirt black. Then he would take off his hat, and his forehead would be white skin.

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      2. We seem to have more Pileated’s around here lately. Or else I’m just seeing them more often.
        Early one morning while sitting in the yard with a rifle waiting for coyotes to come back, I watched a pileated on the yard light post and made the connection to them and their pecking sound. And realized I’ve been hearing them for years, but didn’t know different woodpeckers made different rhythms.
        But it’s not unusual to see them anymore. Still exciting, just not unusual.

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        1. A friend had wood siding on her home. A pileated discovered it, and decided all that wood must harbor tasty insects. My friend typically was awakened in summer by the bird hammering on her wood wall at 4 or 5 in the morning.

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        1. 3 summers ago we had one below our bird feeder. When you see them on the ground you realize how big they are.

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    2. That was a lot more common back in the days before cabs and AC. My dad would come in like that often.
      It seems a lot of my jobs make me dirty. Sometimes it’s just sweat and dust, sometimes its dirt and oil and grease. At least these days, I don’t often get covered in manure anymore. If I do, there is something seriously wrong.

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    4. I’m just in from baling straw. Not too dirty, thank you cab and AC. But I was thinking about this and those old guys.
      You talked about how dirty he was, think of the dust and dirt they inhaled.
      Farmers lung is a real thing.

      Meanwhile, Parm, the kid driving the combine today, the AC in that has quit. So he was riding around in a big glass box with hot air blowing on him. No windows to open, he could open the door, but then he’s got all the dust blowing on him.
      I rode along a few rounds as he finished one field. It was hot in there. I guess we could say Good thing it wasn’t a 90 degree day, but honestly I don’t know how much difference it would have made.

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    2. Welcome to the trail Geri! I agree about hiring out..I already have a phone number for a guy to come out and look at the last post and the gate that needs to be replaced.

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  7. I once spent about a week inventing and assembling a water system for our Lake Superior cabin. The system included hot and cold water going to two sinks and a shower. The job mostly involved lying on my back under the cabin, gluing up sections of PVC pipe. The crawl space under the cabin was filled with live spiders and nightcrawlers and dead mice. Halfway through the project we had two days of heavy rain. so I was scooting around in mud, not dirt.

    When finished, the water system worked for about three weeks. Then fall weather arrived, as any fool would have anticipated. All the PVC pipes were filled with water. When cold temperatures set in, they swelled up and shattered.

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  9. OT: they are learning more about how the virus spreads. The Twin Cities riots and demonstrations didn’t spike our numbers because they were outdoors. Worst case scenario: indoor spaces where people get close to each other and shout or sing. In other words, bars, sports arenas, choir practices, or MAGA rallies.

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  10. Any time I paint for even 5 minutes, you will find me covered with paint, starting with my hands, my face (I must touch my face a LOT), and hair. So I’ve learned to ALWAYS put on paint-worthy clothes and a head scarf of some kind.

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    1. That’s me too. At the college I think to myself “I’m Not painting today I don’t need paint clothes.”
      I can’t even open a can of paint without getting paint on myself.

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