The Joys of Trenching & Inertia!

I am not what you would call a "fit" woman. I am so out of shape. *sigh* Now, you would think that I would take advantage of living on a hillside out in the country to go for walks, right? Wrong!

I seem to so easily succumb to the inertia that comes with living in a space that is so small that there is really no place to move around. I am used to being up and around, walking from room to room or, as in the case of the house we used to "rent" from the bank, up and down the stairs. I really miss that. I miss being in motion. There really is no way to be in motion like that in the RV unless I do an actual workout, which is a bit tricky! So, I end up sitting an awful lot and inertia sets in. Yet, when I do go out to do something like trenching, I just keep going and going and going. I amaze myself with how much I actually get done.

We have water that drains down the hillside from the neighbors property and from ours. It pools at the far end of our meadow, creating a little "creek" running down the middle of our meadow and causing pooling right over our leach lines. Not good! So, Dave had started a trench from where the water joins at the far end of our meadow toward the creek in an attempt to divert it.

I have worked on extending the trench when I can. Yesterday afternoon, I worked hard and got it all the way to the crest above the creek bank. However, it was not deep enough for the water to flow all the way to the crest and down the bank into the creek.

Today, I dug it deeper and got the water much farther along, but got stopped just a few feet short by a very big rock. Dave had been working on the creek crossing and on the drainage of the pool over the leach lines. Then he went and got out that huge rock. He deepened the trench and the water started flowing into the creek. Woohoo! Boy, does that feel good. We will have to keep working on it to keep it clear and deep.

At the beginning of the trench, where the water pools together, I dug on one side and made a dirt "dam" on the other side to try to prevent any more water from going into our meadow. Dave built it up a little bit more. Between the dam and the trench on one end of the meadow and the trenching Dave did at the other end, I have never seen the meadow with this small of an amount of water. Of course, the real test will be when a big rain hits; but any way you look at it, it has to be better than it was.

I did take some pictures of the trenching and will get them up when I can.