I have been a digger for a long time. As kids, we all start with digger-potential. You’ve seen the digger-kids at the beach, the ones with all the equipment and the hard hats, desperately digging a big hole to bury a sibling in. I did the same, I always tried to bury my little brother, I was a digger. Recently, when the garden needed to be turned, I was the digger. When a 6” wide by 18” deep by 60 foot long trench needed to be dug from the house to the propane tank, I was the digger.
Today, we redefined what it takes to be a digger. I am so fortunate to work such wonderful diggers. Each and every one of the diggers, and there were a lot of them, filled and hauled bucket after bucket of gravel with nothing more than a wise comment here and there to inspire each other. Smiles and tired muscles all around. I am proud to work with people like Claire, Jackie, Vera, Heather, Kyle, Cody, and Quinian. We had some help from some part-time diggers but the hard-core diggers moved gravel from a 10m x 3m trench all day in the rain and sleet. In case, you forgot your metric conversions, that’s about 30 feet x 9 feet. When we are done the trench will be about 1.5 m (4.5 ft) deep!!
I tried to put together an image or aerial map of the site. It's fairly accurate. Hope the writing comes through, try a full size image if needed. Thanks to Susan B. of VT for the great journal with the awesome paper!!
Why you ask? A fine question!! The purpose of the trench is to see how far the interesting material extends from the present site. If we find a bunch of artifacts and driftwood at the bottom of the test pit, then we know that there is whole bunch of work to do!! There will probably be lots of calls to loved ones if that happens. This site will then probably be a major league find, and no one is going to want to leave! If on the other hand, we do not find much exciting material, then we continue our work from the present site back to the south and east. Pretty simple, it’s not rocket science; it’s more complicated, it’s archaeology!! I’ll have an actual picture of the trench tomorrow.
The items of the day are the tools of the day. Here are 2 buckets and a shovel. The shovel is taking a break after filling the bucket, the digger is not in the picture because s/he is still working!!
The buckets and the shovels were all pretty beat up by the end of the day. The Diggers looked fine though (from far away). We had discussions about how much a 5 gallon bucket full of gravel weighs. Might need an experiment to figure that out. Our best guess is around 70lbs.
To make things a little more challenging, we decided to move the gravel out of the way completely. We started hand carrying the buckets but that was not an efficient use of time, diggers improvise!! Kyle figured out how to turn a four-wheeler into a piece of heavy equipment. Cody managed to get 14 buckets in one trip!! Kyle had another innovation today, he designed the one bucket scoop. Push the bucket through the gravel and fill it in one sweep! A regular Einstein Digger!!
The four wheelers were a big help in moving the gravel far away from the area we are working in. Some of the other areas of gravel had been moved three of four times, I began to recognize some of the gravel I was shoveling!!
At the end of day, there’s not much left to talk about. Well, there is one more thing that diggers are always passionate about, their shovels!! Here are the kinds we use.
The shovel types all have specific uses and purposes. They are worthy tools, capable of helping a digger move large quantities of material each and every day.
Diggers talk a lot about their shovels. We discuss the pros, cons, and our favorites. A quick, non-scientific survey at the end of the day yielded the following results:
-100% of the diggers preferred the fiberglass handle shovel to the wood one. -80% of the diggers prefer long handles over short handles. -100% of the diggers know that pointed shovels are for digging holes, and flat shovels are for fine work, skimming the surface.
That’s about it, diggers need their rest, there is still more material to be moved tomorrow. Thanks to all the diggers!!