Greenhouse Update 3 - Dirt Work Finished!

We spent the last 5 days shoveling dirt.  (We took off Sunday - day of rest, you know.   The Lord says to rest on Sundays, and that sounded like a good idea to us!)  All the dirt work was extremely back breaking grunt work for sure.   All we have to do yet is put a little more dirt around the outside edges of the greenhouse to shore up the foundation, and put a little more in the walkways.  Then I need to water the dirt real good and break up large pieces of clods.  It's supposed to rain tomorrow evening and the next day, so that will suffice for watering!  Then we will have to put up the mesh on the other side of the greenhouse, add some more treated 2 x 4's for the side plastic, and put the door in.   Then, on a calm day we will get some help and put the roof on.    And finally I can have fun planting!
     It was hard to keep the cats out of the greenhouse while doing the dirt work.  Of course they thought we were building "custom litter boxes" for them!  The boxes do have dirt and cow manure in them, so if it smells like poo, it's a litter box, right?  I spent a lot of time chasing cats and throwing clumps of dirt at them.
     We were able to back up the truck to one of the outside walls and get in the back of the truck and shovel dirt into the boxes that way.   For the middle box, we had to fling quite a ways, but it beat the bucket method.   For the box along the outside wall, the dirt filling went quickly as we could both get in the truck bed and shovel, then move the truck down a ways, and continue shoveling.   It was amazing how much dirt it took to fill these boxes!!  The boxes are only 6 inches deep and mounded up a bit, but when they are 25 feet long, that's a lot of dirt!  The two outside ones are about 3 feet wide, and the middle one is 4 feet wide.

Harold shovels out the last of the dirt from the pick-up. 

 

The middle box will be cut off to about where the little chunk of square wood is sitting.   I need a space around the doorway for a wide walk area.   We will put a board across the end after we cut it.   So the middle box will only be about 21 feet long.

We used both new treated lumber and old junk lumber to build this greenhouse.   All the outside posts and beams are new lumber, and the boxes are actually made out of some old free pallets Harold got several years ago.   He took them apart to use the 1 x 6's in them.   The walkways are 30 inches wide.  We still have to cut up some more re-bar to shore up some of the boxes yet.
     We knew the dirt hauling and shoveling would be the hardest job in this project, and thankfully it is done!  Now our backs and sore arms can rest.............