The Foundation: (In part)

Below is what my garden looked like when I was ready to start building. Those gigantic plants on the right are tomato plants. Though all of the corn had been picked as of August 2, everything else was thriving, so I couldn't just cut it all down to make the wall. I decided I would have to work around things.


With the corn harvested, it was time to get to work on the first section of the wall, which would be about 41.5' long. The first thing I did was to cut the corn down. Then I proceeded to dig out the roots of the corn stalks, so I could dig the shallow trench easier.

Once I had cut all of it out and put the remains with the stalks in a compost heap, this is what it looked like:

At this point I set my lines and began the back-breaking work of digging the shallow trench (about 5" deep & 30" wide), and carting the dirt away to a nearby pile.

Finishing this trench took me several hours in the hot sun, so once I was done, I didn't do any more work that Saturday (August 2).


The next Tuesday (August 5), I began to lay the foundation stones. The foundation would essentially look like a stone footpath about 30'' wide, and the stones would need to be basically the same thickness (about 5"). Not only that, but the stones would have to be hauled one at a time from the rock pile and be carefully laid next to the previous stone, making sure that I pinned any rocks that were unstable w/ smaller rocks underneath it. Then there was the packing. Though it has been said before that "packing is for pussies" I know that the wall won't be worth a damn w/o it. (The 'packing' is the practice of filling in all the empty spaces between the bigger rocks with smaller rocks, until it's packed full.)

So I took special care to pack the stones well, using breakage from the bigger stones that I had to break when they wouldn't fit. I found that I had essentially no waste (unusable rock) left over from the stones I used for the foundation.


The next day (August 6) I was able to get this far:



This is me taking off a high spot in the stone w/ a chisel.



As of this past Saturday (August 9), I was able to basically finish the foundation for the 41.5' stretch.



I planned to start the wall from the corner seen in the picture immediately above. To do this, I'll have to lay some foundation extending perpendicularly so that I can avoid having one wall disconnected from it's adjacent wall. (better pictures on the way!)