one of my annual fall projects is to work on one or two of the numerous woods roads that transect our land. Most of these are old skid roads and have been left with occasional deep ruts; the scars of logging too late in the winter. This fall, I tended to finishing a road I'd started two years ago. It's part of my cross-country ski loop which placed it on the top of my priority list. Two deep ruts were filled with rock, the road leveled, graded and seeded. Another 250' of woods road completed. With a few warm days left, I'm hoping the seed I spread germinates. I use a conservation mix which includes a variety of grasses and clover.
The fill rock came from an old farmers rock pile originally left from clearing land over 100 years ago. For some reason, this pile was placed in the middle of a field. Tearing the pile apart was fun. The kids spent several afternoons digging to find "treasures" which included old cow bones and fragments from both china plates and earthenware.Much of the rock from this pile went to
leveling yet another portion of road I am working on which provides access to the back corner of our property. Part of this road is corduroy I placed two years ago. I'm not sure how long the corduroy (wood) portion of this road will last. It's fairly quick to build but the wood eventually will decay. Rock lasts forever and, while it may take a bit longer to move and set, is inevitably much more durable. Big rock goes on the bottom, smaller rock gets placed on top. Finally, the road gets a coating of gravel to fill in all the gaps. In Maine, we have plenty of rock....The larger stones went to rebuilding a stone wall but that's a story for another day.
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