I am becoming an expert digger.

Thursday, I dug all day. I was shoveling excavated dirt onto a screen to sift out large rocks. Then, someone (mostly Jeff) would scoop up the dirt and put it in a bag. Then, someone else (Jessa) would move the bag to its position in the wall, where someone else (Phil and Adam) would tamp the bags. (This is a fairly simplified version of the day, but, really, I just dug all day. Other things happened, like a bag holder being designed and forms being finished and placed.)

Yesterday was a lot of fun (to me.) The team split up, so Adam and Jeff went to John's and Phil, Jessa, Jessa's husband (Nathan) and I went to Rob and Michelle's. Jessa had purchased 40 80-pound bags of concrete, so we needed to take two trucks to carry the load. Jessa and I were in her truck- we met up with Michelle and her boys at a farm to look at bales of straw- test the wetness and size and whatnot. Everything seemed fine and the straw will be delivered in a few weeks (so Michelle doesn't have to worry about keeping them dry on her property until it's time to start strawbale construction.)

When we met up with Nathan and Phil at Michelle's (after a spurt of rain and lots of "please stop raining so this concrete doesn't get ruined..."), we started cleaning up the foundation trenches that were dug last time we were up there. We had to widen a few spots and take all the loose clay/dirt out of the bottom, squaring the edges as much as possible. Then we had to mark where the pillars for the timberframing were going to go. There are 12 pillars (which is probably overkill for this tiny structure, but we're going with it- designed by someone else) and each pillar needs a concrete base. So, using many tape measurers, line levels, yards of string, plum-bobs and lots of brain power, we marked our 12 posts and dug out where the base would go underground. Nathan and I mixed concrete in the mixer that Phil normally uses for plastering while Jessa and Phil prepared the 10 inch tubes that we would be filling- hammering rebar in the free-standing tubes for extra support. We worked out a system for filling most of the tubes- Nathan would move the wheelbarrow full of concrete to the tube and tilt it up, either Phil or Jessa would hold the "funnel" (extra tube cut open and used as a slide) and I would push the concrete with a hoe. As we were filling the first 6 (mostly buried) tubes, we saw that there were some big storm clouds coming. We started moving faster to fill the freestanding tubes,concrete although they took longer since we coudn't get the wheelbarrow close enough to pour; we had to shovel into the tubes, which were twice as tall as the tubes that were buried. We got a few filled, keeping an eye on the fast-approaching clouds that were starting to lightning. We worked through the first couple of sprinkles, but as soon as hail started falling on us, we ran inside. (Actually, Phil and I ran inside. Jessa and Nathan ran to the truck.) We waited for the rain to stop pouring for nearly an hour. Once it got down to light sprinkles, we went back outside and continued filling the last couple of tubes and leveling the tops of the tubes that had been rained on. Our shoes collected mud/clay like crazy- they became so big and heavy so quickly that it very soon became difficult to walk. We finished up though, stuck empty concrete bags over the top of the pillars (to try to protect the smooth surface from the still-falling rain), decided against laying drain tile (which was part of the original plan so that Michelle could have the gravel poured at any time) because we didn't want to risk knocking over one of the wet free-standing concrete pillars. Jessa said that she and Nathan would come back tomorrow (today) to check on the pillar bases and lay the drain tile.

By the time that we moved the rest of the concrete bags (which had been kept fairly dry throughout this whole process) into Michelle's barn and said our goodbyes, it's was 7:00, we were soaked, bad smelling and in desperate need of showers. It was fun though (although I am now going to move my rainboots into Jessa's truck.)