Sunday, April 29, 2012

The Retaining Wall is Trying to Kill Me.


The Retaining Wall is Trying to Kill Me.

Yes. Yes it is. During this stretch we put in the drainage ditch along the driveway that we sorely needed in order to get more fill. We ran out of fill. But it seems we may never run out of rocks.

I thought that nothing was going to capture the sheer scale of this thing unless I took it upon myself. So I climbed down in front of this monstrosity. Yes, I am normal sized. Yes the wall is that motherfucking huge.



Here is a close up. But not of my face.




Because I don't want to get murdered- me to the entire Internet.

Yeah. You can really see the difference between the regular sized rock I am holding and the demon behemoths behind me.

So far we have been grinding along on this project pretty well. It has been a repetitive dance of adding more rocks to the wall, and then adding more fill and then more rocks and more fill until our bodies give out.

It doesn't help though that each trip requires me to go farther for rocks as the wall becomes higher, or that the chickens demand to be in the center of things when we are moving earth around because oh my god earth worms. But these are things I knew would happen. Except for the part where I nearly brained a chicken with my shovel because she snuck into the back of the pick up. Or when I freaked out because I stepped on my prize roosters toes (he was fine) because he had to see what I was doing. Or the part where we broke down and started moving huge rocks with the back hoe because we couldn't pick them up anymore.

The highlight of the day was when two of my hens decided to have a knock down drag out fight over the dirt pile because they both wanted a dust bath at the same time. A speckled hen and gray started yelling obsinites before launching themselves at each other. For a few rounds they bobbed and cursed and shrieked. I don't know if you've ever seen chickens fight but they sort of jump up, flap there wings madly and bite and claw at each other. Well on the third round the Speckle decided that she had had enough of this shit. Instead of jumping all the way, she jumped and ducked her head under the Gray's and grabbed a beak full of her check feathers.

I am not doing this move justice here. It was like chicken kung foo. She was all like SHAZAM! (Insert kill bill music here)

So she grabs Grays head and proceeded to drag here around face first in the dirt for one whole big circle before letting her go. I could almost hear her shouting shit through her mouth full of feathers like 'you like that bitch? Uh huh! Mmmm dirts tastes good don't it!?' At this point Drumstick, the head rooster ran over and broke up the fight, leaving the looser to stagger away dizzily and the victor to take the best goddamned dust bath in the history of dust baths.

Which means that I pretty much to finish this retaining wall as soon as possible.

It's tearing us apart around here.

Literally.

Want more retaining wall adventure? Here's the final installment

4 comments:

  1. First of all - that wall is amazing. I'm seriously impressed. I had been imagining something more along the lines of... oh... I don't know... maybe three feet off the ground? You guys are high style to have built one this big. At least the size of the thing is proportionate to the pain you're going through! I mean, if it had only been a few feet off the ground - all this suffering wouldn't have felt nearly as worth it.

    You're chicken fight really cracked me up... sounded like something right out of a movie - too bad you didn't get a video of it ;-)

    And finally, thanks so much for helping me out with my blog!

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  2. Oh, thanks it is a wonderful thing you are doing. Yeah I knew the only thing that would really show the scale was getting down in that hole. But this is what we need to keep the driveway out of the creek.

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  3. I'm so glad you describe that chicken fight. I'd never heard of hens fighting. ...and I used to live in chicken country - Delaware is full of corporate chicken farms. I moved to Indiana, and one of my parents' neighbors brought over a dozen free-range chicken eggs for me! How's that for a welcome gift!

    And the retaining wall is imposing. You're right...you'd better finish it before your chickens kill each other over it!

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  4. Chickens are vicious! When i was tiny, they pecked holes in my inflatable swimming pool. I don't actually remember this but i was told about it. I still don't like chickens.

    I like your wall, it reminds me of all those stone fences that are in the movies of Ireland. I can appreciate the work in that. I hate picking rocks.

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