Days Of Hard Work

 Three dump trucks of road base was dropped off this morning. Probably about 45 tons of road base which is crushed rock with an aggregate that locks together to form a solid driveway. Every several years we have to add road base to our drive to keep from getting muddy spots. I worked for 5 hours and did not put much of a dent in the road base. Tomorrow is another day but it is clear it is going to take days to spread this road base. And yes that is a snow bank behind the road base that is about 10' high. We are 50" below the snow pack that we had last year at this time. It looks like we are going to be pretty dry this year. It is good to get the road base spread this time of year as when the ground is soft it settles in and makes a solid driveway to drive on. This delivery cost $500.00, but it is worth every ache and pain plus the cost.

 I had to take off the snow thrower and sub frame to put the front end loader on the tractor which is a great help. The above photo shows where the road base has already been spread and the wet muddy spots are now buried well under the road base. That will make getting around much easier. If we get another heavy snow I will need to re-install the sub frame and snow thrower or blade.

Looking down the driveway the wet muddy spots are visible and if the weather holds long enough by tomorrow I'll have road base on those areas. As can be seen there is still a lot of snow that will melt yet so it is important to get something on those wet area's that will keep the mud from being a problem. Maybe by tomorrow I'll recover from all the aches and pain from raking and some shoveling some that can't be moved with the front end loader. We have springs that run in the spring time that can make the driveway pretty soft so a generous application of road base should eliminate that problem. The tractor with front end loader is much better than hauling it with a wheel barrow like in the past but there is still a lot of manual labor involved. I will sleep well tonight after all that hard work.

Life in the mountains is never easy but some jobs are harder than others and this is one of those.