On Road Construction-(4) Epilogue

As of Fall '07, our 1/2 mile roadbed is about 98% complete. The first section of roadbed, from paved surface, is complete. My neighbor across the street came over with an excavator and removed the few large, remaining rocks from my roadbed. A drainage swale was excavated on the uphill side of our road bed, the thick sod and soil placed on the downhill side of the road (the sod went down first, soil on top). The purpose of an uphill swale is not to drain the road but to intercept the subsoil flow of water and give it a place to go other than under my road.

The front field, which our driveway borders, is pasture and was fairly uneven. The old access road went through the middle of this pasture. As a good portion of this area had already been dug up, I decided to renovate the rest of it as well. High spots were scraped of sod which was placed in low spots. Soil removed from high spots and swales was placed on top of the sod and used to level other uneven areas. After I placed the sod, I'd run it over with the wheels of the tractor to flatten it, place soil on top of that and run it over again. I was lucky enough to find an old manure bed on the other side of the pasture. I guess barn waste had been dumped against a large rock many years ago. I scraped off the top layer of sod and harvested the nice, almost peat-like soil and used it as a top layer for starting grass seed. This I dumped and hand raked to about 1/2-1" thick, seeded with a mix of grass seed, clover and timothy and covered with mulch hay. As I was raking, I found small pieces of hard coal, some old soda (orange crush) bottles, a bit of barbed wire and other odd bits of history.

I managed to get grass seed growing well before cold weather arrived and the restored field area looks very nice. This front field mostly covers ledge. In the spring, water seeps into the soil, hits the ledge and moves slowly down hill (the whole area is sort of a hilltop). By adding drainage swales, the flow of water is intercepted and directed to drain more directly into a watershed. Previously, it would drain and sit, keeping this field too wet to use till mid-summer. I am very mindful of the environment. This area has always been used as pasture and had always drained the way it still does. I only enhanced the ability of the subsurface water to move to the place it always had.

The only obstacle left to deal with is a stream crossing. Our choices were culvert or bridge. After discussions with our local state forester and also someone from the forest service who deals with water issues, I decided upon a bridge. Firstly, I would not be disturbing the stream bed. Secondly, a culvert would have to be set at an extreme angle due to the location of uphill vs. downhill stream beds. My wife wants something that looks like a bridge. A culvert would have necessitated creating abutments made of stone and I got hung up on creating footings in a wet area. Seemed like using a culvert would be a project that could grow in complexity quite quickly. On the other hand, a bridge might cost more up front for the steel I-beams, but would be easier and quicker to install. More on this later.

There are still a few places I need to widen our road but I can do this as I need to. There is still one last bumpy spot that is still just rock. This last bit is about 20 feet long and will be finished this next spring. We are beginning to discuss house plans and the remainder of the drive closest to the house will be tackled prior to home construction once we decide on the location of the house.

As it stands now, Fall '07, we have a nice winding, half-mile driveway that traverses field and forest and looks very nice. Water drains to the sides of the roadbed nicely, flowing away, downhill through designed swales. The road stays firm throughout the spring as the ground thaws; this being the major issue in our area where the ground can freeze to 4 feet and we can get feet of snow in winter. Much of the roadside is grass and gets mowed throughout the summer. You can see across field and through forest as you drive into our future homesite. The deer frequent the field, the birds are abundant and include a mating pair of pileated woodpeckers and there are an abundance of other small mammals that we see constantly.

There is also now a small pond down-field of the first restored field. More on this in another post. We are having an early winter this year so there is little I can do in over a foot of snow. I will be catching up in my blog postings.