Chapter 54...Culvert Saga Is Over

Off Grid...Chapter 54 I am so thankful we got at least 1 nice day this past week. Monday 3-23 Today we have an appointment to take our Jeep in to be worked on. We have no park so it should just be a linkage change. It should be an easy fix. We went and picked up our rental truck first and then dropped off Mr. Jeep. After that we went over to Lowe's to price lumber for our deck. Holy cow prices have gone insane. We'll have to call our supplier and see if he can do better. We went home and waited for the call to pick up our Jeep. They called and told us they are doing recall work and they have to order parts. Oh no Mike was worried about this. Auto dealers are like the "Hotel California" your car can check in but never check out. Lets just hope they don't cause new problems. Tuesday 3-24 Busy day scheduled. First thing today we meet with Craig, our concrete man. We are getting an estimate for the wings on the house, a pad for both shipping containers, and also for a patio. Next thing we see is Howard up feeding the cows and we see a backhoe coming in. Then we see a dump truck coming in. We ordered 9 1/2 tons of rock to start working on our ditch line. Mike parks the truck at the bottom of the drive so we don't get stuck and Brian dumps the rock on the top of the drive. Now it's time to work on the culvert again. Today we are getting this job done. Mike and Brain connect the chain to try and pull the other chain and tire through the culvert. Now we have the power. Brian starts to pull. And pull. Then the chain snaps. Now we have to come up with another plan. Brian says "if we can find something long enough(30 feet) and strong enough maybe we can push the tire out." Ok it's worth a shot. We have some old tobacco drying poles in the barn. Down to the barn we go. Here is Mike cutting the straps on the pole. Next he tries to pull it down but it is wedged in. Mike has to get the chain saw and cut 4 inches off the pole so it will fall out of the pocket that is holding it up. Brain pulls the backhoe in the barn and we get it down. Back at the culvert we put the pole inside the culvert. Twenty feet is in. Now we have to push the rest of the pole n. Now Brian has to reposition himself and pull. It's a slow go. I go onto the other side to watch the pole coming through the pipe. It comes out just above tire. We pull the pole back out and try again. It finds the same hole. We do this about 6 times and Mike has finally had it. He tells Brian to dig it out. Brian is digging it out. ' We have a 20 foot culvert and a 10 foot culvert connected with a collar. We get the culvert out and Brian starts to lift it and shake it to clean it out. Over and over. There is too much stress on the pipe and we crush part of it. We can salvage the one 10 foot piece. Brian is trying to shake the debris out of the culvert. Brian takes his truck to David's to pick up two 10 foot culverts and another collar. This will be easier for us to handle. While Brian is gone Mike and I go up the driveway to work on getting the rocks in the ditch. There was no way to dump then directly into the ditch so Mike and I will have to move them by hand and use the tractor for help. Here I am loading some of the rocks into the tractor bucket. Mike is spreading them out in the ditch. Finally we get the rock in the ditch. And. Now we just have to hand place the rock going up the sides of the ditch line. We need about 5 more trucks of rock to get to the culvert. We started at the top and we are working our way down. Just as we finish cleaning up the rock Brain shows up with the culverts. Oh well no breaks today. He dumps the culverts out and picks one up with the backhoe. The first 10 footer is in. We get the next one in and connect the collar. Finally the last section is in. I am tightening the collar. One everything is in place we make a header for the culvert. Brian continues to cover the culvert but he gets a flat tire. He goes back to the shop to get it fixed. It's getting late and we need to get the driveway in place "today". He gets back an hour later and cleans up the road as good as he can. We need more gravel but it is too late today. Yay, happy dance. We are done messing with the culvert. Wednesday 3-24 It poured all night long. It is a good thing we pushed yesterday and got the culvert in. Mike went down to check the new culvert and it is clear. Woo hoo. Our Jeep is still in the shop. We told them that we are renting a 4x4 truck while they fix it and we need it back. They told us to come pick up a loaner. So we drive to town to return the truck and pick up a car. They gave us an old Dodge Stratus. It is so so low to the ground. We get home and Mike lucks out. We make it to the top of our driveway. Thursday 3-25 It is still raining and now it is starting to get colder. We drove over to our other property to check on it. Everything looks good but we have to start mowing soon. When we got back it was too wet to make it to the top so we parked the car in the barn. First we had to remove all the hay that was on the floor. Mike told me years ago he was at a swap meet and it poured so they put straw down to stop the mud. A man parked his motorhome on top of the straw and it caught fire underneath. We don't need to burn the barn down on top of everything else, lol. Friday 3-26 The Bull got inside our fence. Uh oh. The grass is starting to turn green so it looks appealing to the cows. Time to start working on the fence. Howard showed up and Mike told him he can have the old 20 foot culvert if he takes it out of here. We drove into town and picked up our Jeep. Hopefully they didn't mess anything up. On our way home we stopped at David's to pay for the 2 culverts. Saturday and Sunday- It is cold and rainy. We got a snow/rain combo on Sunday. Yuk. That's our story for the week. Finally the "culvert saga" has ended. We only had one good day to work and we took full advantage of it. Now if Spring would just get here and stay. Lisa