Since my last post I have gotten a lot done, thanks to the two ladies who were kind enough to help me!
Sara Jones Bagby was the first of these remarkable women to help me. Sara had expressed the need to exercise more, and I said "Of course I can assist, and I won't even charge you a cent". So, on a beautiful Monday morning she came over and we filled three truck loads of the neighbor's old fence posts. Of which we had permission, by the way.
Unloading those eight foot logs of cedar in various stages of decay was a lot easier than lifting them into the truck bed. Sometimes gravity is your friend, sometimes it isn't. A lot like people.
Sara's help was invaluable. Not only did it cut my time in half, but several of the fence posts could only have been lifted by the two of us (or one man). When Sara had to leave, I made one more load by myself.
These trips brought back a huge number of fence posts, and I had no idea how much of the retainer walls they would cover. I was hoping, of the five levels, it would be half to three quarters of the entire job. So one industrious morning, I got out and started laying the logs end to end and stacked so that no two joints were located one above the other, like you would lay a hardwood floor.
I was thinking of making the logs as close to vertical as possible, when I remembered Sara had mentioned that the walls slanted back, so why not make the logs conform to the wall, instead of having to back fill a huge area. Sara, thanks for the help.
After carefully selecting each log for the proper thickness and length, by the afternoon I had arranged all the logs and saw that hadn't even covered one of the five rows. I figured I needed more than just Sara to help me.
Later that week, I think Sara was recovering from my helping her use her large muscles (you're welcome, Sara), so I attached my 16' trailer to the truck then drove it to the wood pile. I walked home past several young bulls who couldn't decide if I was a threat or not, and brought my Barbie-sized tractor back. I was able to scoop some of the fence posts up with the front end loader, but on the whole I simply set the scoop low and close to the pile of logs. That way I was able to roll the posts into the scoop, or I only had to lift them a short distance. Now that scoop only holds about 5 logs at a time, being as it's a Barbie sized tractor, but that beats one at a time by hand.
So with many trips, and in relatively no time, I had that 16 ft. trailer loaded to the hilt. You're going to have to Google "hilt", cause I've no idea what that is, but it was full to it. When I got home, I drove to the top of the tank's berm, and tossed all the logs out and let them land where they might. I will place them when I get time, help, or inspiration. Or possibly all three. I can use all three to help me!
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