A couple days ago I was cleaning up a new garden spot in my old chicken yard and I came across a couple rocks that were sticking barely out of the ground. Over the past years I have dug up a number of various rocks that have inhabited the ground around the farm but these were a different breed. So far they're the biggest I have pulled up on the property and only took me 2.5 hours to accomplish.
A BIG note is that everything I do is by myself. Both kids are far too young to help with any of the heavy tasks such as moving boulders. This forces me to come up with innovative and different means of accomplishing the projects that I have.
Ingenuity is required when working by oneself to make things as easy and effective as possible.
This is what I had to start with on both rocks. You can see how only a couple inches was above the ground. Little did I know just how big they would be until I dug down a bit. The top one was the first rock and the bottom pic was the second. They happened to be buried right next to each so it helped reduce the amount of digging a little bit.
The process goes back and forth around the boulder, lift with the pipe, add cribbing to block the boulder up, reposition the pipe and lever/lift again, add more cribbing, and so on. The 3rd picture shows a crack that existed in the first largest boulder. I noticed it had a small seam while working so my hope was I could shear a piece of the boulder off.
After some banging with a sledge hammer and a maul, I was able to use my pry bar to work the chunk of boulder off which made the main piece a good bit easier to move. I could at least roll the rock.
I was happy to have moved the monster, but the second rock was sitting there leering at me, mocking me, so I had to work on it.
The same process happened with the second rock only this one exited the soil in a far easier fashion than the first. It probably had to do with having a method developed from the first rock. At a couple of points I needed an extension bar to increase the length of my pipe to give me more leverage.
At last I have the 2 rocks sitting atop a large boulder that is barely out of the ground. That one is FAR beyond my means of removal so it is going to stay there and I will work around it. Half of the area is now tilled in an attempt to control the weeds but it is raining now so the rest of the tilling will have to wait for a dry spell next week.
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Fleming Family Farm
FLEMING FAMILY FARM, LLC
Sustainable & Organic Methods | Heirloom Produce
