It's hard to describe that primordial feeling we males get in the presence of big trucks, huge cranes and large pieces of noisy machinery. It stirs something in the male psyche which is probably why our boys just loved to push around those big yellow Tonka toys in the back yard. And so it was last week when the concrete was poured for the foundations and a train of concrete trucks rumbled up our rutted driveway to pour concrete into the skip of a huge concrete pump. Up on the foundation forms, a large bearded guy quietly stood to one side holding a radio-controlled remote in his hand, casually directing the pump around the foundation as it spewed out thousands of pounds of the wet, gray material, while a gang of workers fussed, filled and flattened the concrete until it was level with the top of the forms. And while some sort of controlled chaos might have been expected, this was a well orchestrated performance. Everyone knew their job and their place and simply got on with it.
As I watched all this action unfold I suddenly started to worry about the cost. (You know me and if you don't then you need to read my earlier blogs on this subject!). I mean, it's one thing to buy a Tonka truck at the local toy store and imagine it digging, lifting, hauling and tipping; but it's quite another thing to have a whole fleet of real Tonkas performing on your account! I guess I need to trust our builder who has after all budgeted the project and who, I hope, has a lot more experience in these matters than me.
The foundation is what is called an engineered foundation, meaning it's like a waffle with deeply formed and reinforced concrete beams criss-crossing the pad, with a concrete slab being poured into the space in between and to a depth of four inches or so over the entire area. The workshop sits on a slope so the foundation at the lower end is elevated about five feet. We will eventually build a wall with field stone that will hide the concrete and give the effect of having the building standing on a field stone foundation. Framing will start this week and our first priority will be to finalize the window locations and select the windows.
My overall mood was not helped last week when I stupidly tripped on the stairs at home and ended up breaking some tiny bone in my wrist that necessitated the wearing of a soft cast. My right wrist! We had arranged a U-Haul truck to pick up some milled boards from our sawmill in Houston. Unfortunately, the sawmill owner had his own problems and instead of being there to help us load the wood was at the hospital having surgery after a tree trunk rolled on to his finger. So there we were, me with my wrist in a brace and my partner decked out in her work gloves, facing a stack of 26 boards, each one about eight feet long, two feet wide and 2" thick. So we set to and after some maneuvering managed to lift the first board into the back of the truck. It was surprisingly heavy. We looked at each other and realized in some despair that we had, to coin a phrase, a problem! We were never going to be able to move this pile of wood on our own. My partner, who is never afraid of asking for what she wants, spied a couple of road construction workers, walked over to them and politely asked if they would help.
I stood there looking helpless, cradling my damaged wrist and feeling fairly sure that their supervisor would not allow them such a distraction (My partner would argue that I still haven't lost that British reserve). Surprisingly, for me at least, they took pity on us and our problem was solved. Except that we still had to figure out how to unload the wood at the other end. This particular issue was sorted by a phone call to our good friends over at Miracle Farm who turned out in force to help. So all's well that ends well and we now have 500 board feet of pecan, saved from the city dump, air drying. I should add that the wood drying saga is not over as we have another five logs at the mill waiting to be milled.
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