The ground is just thawed and dry enough to get in some digging on the sunnier days. I have a lot of digging ahead of me, and so I have to take advantage of all the time I can get.

An addition will be put on the house, including an upgrade to the outdoor kitchen, and a bigger rainwater system.

The addition will be here, on the South side of the house so that it will be warmer. Our rain barrels will be set up closer to the outdoor kitchen, and uphill to use gravity feed for the water system.

I started digging out the part of the foundation at the lowest point of the hill. It needs to be dug down enough to flatten the whole area and then more for the foundation. Hopefully that the rainwater flowing down the hill helps to wash out some of the dirt and make digging easier.

I will line up all the rocks to the left to eventually be used for gravel and the stone foundation. The entire bottom of the dug out area you can see is large stone. Hopefully a good fit for the foundation once they are dug out.

Here is another look at the huge amount of available stone.

The top of the hill will be where we set up shop, a staging area. I’m clearing away the rooty soil to get to the use-able clay below and the rocks are sorted out for the various uses to the right. The clay sifter is in the middle, right between the piles it is sorting out. There will be lots of processing for this project. Luckily boys like playing in dirt.