Work Party Update

I'm about a week or two late on this one. I kept meaning to post up pictures of our work party but I guess I lost track of time...

Way back in the days of yore, about two weeks ago on March 22nd, we gathered the fair folk of the community around us to rally towards one common goal...shavings in field one. Ok. I can't type the whole post like that...

One of the smaller piles at the start of raking.

We had a good showing with around 12-14 people out working all day (including four of us). We started with Rake-a-palooza and were able to get all of field one raked and moved to the burn piles within two hours. We pretty much had to start from scratch as winds and water had moved most of the piles that had been raked previously.

This was early on with one of the bigger piles next to the firepit.

This was at the end of raking before we started into the big job.

Once this was winding down, we setup the shavings teams. We had three people at the shavings hut, endlessly filling garbage buckets with shavings. I drove the tractor and trailer ferrying 18 or so buckets at a time back and forth. I would drive around the outer ring, back in through the horse pasture and into the field where a team of 8-10 people would unload and quickly dump. By the time I turned around they would load up what buckets they had.

Our Shavings Hut loading station.

In the end we had enough people. The tractor ended up being the bottleneck due to the longer path I needed to take. We worked through the morning and got most of that side of field one done.

We broke for a tasty lunch. A few people had to leave and a few more came in. We were down two overall. Still plenty enough to do the work, we went back at it. A few more loads from the shavings hut and it was time to switch sides.

The other side was a bit more direct, however the easiest route was a sharp turn on soft soil which was still damaged from the bush moving, so we took the bridge. The bridge was wide enough for the tractor, but a little too skinny for the trailer. You could make it if you lined the wheels up right. That being said, it was not an easy crossing. You come at it from one side at an angle and the other side through mud. Once you are on there you have to start turning well in advance to shift the trailer over. There was a few times where we dropped a wheel just before clearing it and several more times where the guys had to lift and move over my trailer.

Liz and Josh wait for the next load near the trail I have carved.

Josh helping get the tractor moving through all the mud.

As a few more had to go, I switched driving over to Marc so I could help out. We plugged away slowly trying to finish as much as we could.

A pile of buckets waiting for the tractor to come back around.

At the end of the day, we had completed just over half of field one. It was a success as we did as much as possible without having another tractor and a lot more people and buckets, but we still have more work to do. For now, shavings is on hold until raking and pruning wraps up this week. Then we will see about getting another work party rolling.

Field one in the background with the first half we did.

A view of fields two and three and the cow barn.

A big thanks to all of those who came out to help! It was a long day, 6 (possibly 7) hours of hard work, but we did not waste it.