Easter Chicks

We were up bright and early Friday morning and couldn't wait to get started on the mammoth task of shifting so much soil (and who knows what else?). We'd been discussing the levels required for the pond and also for the base of the filter house. Due to the height of the vortex the depth required in the filter house was only 25cm short of the depth required for the actual pond, therefore we decided to amend our plans (yep, we're changing our minds again) and excavate the area for the filter house to the same depth as the pond. This would then allow us to concrete the whole area in one go!

Hand to eye coordination was a little off to begin with as the bucket of the digger danced with all sorts of crazy moves like a drunk Dad on a dance floor, but we soon had it back under control within a few minutes. It was then all steam ahead as bucket after bucket of soil, gravel, hardcore, clay, and lots of other "stuff" made it's way from earth to bucket, to MDTT and finally to the skip. Progress however did seem slow as the MDTT isn't the fastest piece of kit. In fact it's considerably slow and we did consider just using the wheel barrow. However we soon changed our minds when we realised that the wheel barrow could only manage two buckets of soil, where as the MDTT could easily manage 8-10. It was therefore doing the job of around 4 or 5 wheel barrows in one go, it was considerably less physical than having to barrow the soil around, plus tipping the soil into the skip was easy, you just had to push the levers in the correct order!

We were making good progress until disaster struck at around 11.30(ish) when the digger threw one of its treads. No it wasn't my driving! After a considerable amount of time contemplating and trying to work things out we spent the next umpteen minutes trying different ways to fix the problem. After the trial and error stage came the grunting & other various noises (anyone on the other side of the fence would have thought we'd dug up some cave men). This was soon followed by a whole host of new descriptive noises (commonly know as swearing) before we finally gave in ... exhausted and aching. Of course we'd tried the hire company first for their assistance, but this was Easter weekend and so no one was available.

Rather than sit and do nothing for the whole weekend we decided to excavate as much soil as possible from the diggers now fixed position. Some hours later we'd managed to excavate a beautiful arc in the soil which wasn't really practical with regards to digging out the pond area but it at least we hadn't wasted any time. Day 1 of digging over and we'd accomplished quite a bit, however there was still a considerable amount to do, made even more of a challenge with a limping micro digger and a driver who was walking as if he'd been in the saddle all day. How do Cowboys do it!

**Important Update**

We blogged not long back that we'd discovered a Song Thrush nesting in a small trees in the midst of all the happenings. Well we can go one better than that now .... there's now three chicks! Mum and Dad are backwards and forwards to and from the nest even with all the plant machinery running. We're not experts but the chicks and parents seem to all be doing well. HAPPY EASTER!!

Song Thrush Chicks