It was a trenching experience...

It was a trenching experience...  With a lot of help from my friend and neighbor (Tim D.), we dug about 220 feet of 42 inch deep trench yesterday.  Tim is visible, along with his dogs, in the last photo below.  He worked in the trench, monitoring the depth (with the marked up piece of pipe to the left) and fine-finishing the bottom with a shovel.  I worked the backhoe to dig out the bulk of the soil.  Some of the areas we dug into were compacted clay, hard enough to pose a challenge for my little Kubota.  But we did it!

The first two photos show the electrical trench in the morning, before we got started.  The trench the tractor is working on is for the “primary side” of our barn's power connection.  Where I was standing when I took the first photo is approximately where the barn's transformer will be mounted.  Just barely visible, behind and to the right of the tractor, is the telephone pole we'll be connecting that transformer to.  The second trench crossing the first at an angle is leading between the barn and the house.  It will carry lines for natural gas, potable water, and network.  I'll be working on that trench once the electrical trench is finished.  For the second photo, I sat in the tractor's seat looking west to the barn.  The end of the trench is where the transformer will sit, about 12' from the service entrance on the barn.  There will be a short underground “secondary side” run there as well.