Measure Twice, Cut Once

When we first moved to our homestead we had all kinds of ideas for building a cheap road, for we needed about 1/8 of a mile of it. Most of them involved a lot of digging and picking rocks and then placing them carefully by hand to give a solid base to drive on.

The before top and the after shoot of the road across the hay field, still waiting for gravel.

We have now been living on the homestead for two years with no road - only a rough trail across the hay field. It was time to build a road that would be all weather. The first thing was to breakup all the sod and move most of this along with the topsoil off of the road bed. Next ditches needed to be cut along the sides so the water would drain off the road; a crown needed to be put on the road so the water would run off the road and into the ditches. You could do this by hand if you didn’t have anything to do for the next ten years. You could hire someone to do it for you but you would still need ten years to earn the money to pay for it. The next thing to do was to borrow a small tractor with a couple of pieces of equipment.

1. Blade to move the dirt
2. Chisel plow to loosen the dirt
3. Set of harrows to smooth everything out

We finally had all the equipment borrowed and then it started raining, and so we used this to help us too. The ground under the road was very dry and so as we worked up the sod we found that with the rain (2-3 inches in two days) we could mix the thin layer of topsoil in with the sand and clay that the chisel plow was bringing up.

Day 1
We just kept plowing the roadbed bringing up more sand and clay mixing it all together letting the rain soak it up.
Day 2
The rain quit and we left it for a day to mellow out and let some of the water in the low places drain off.
Day 3
We put on the blade and began to move and pack the dirt. We did blade some of the topsoil off but most of it was now mixed into the clay and sand. By moving the dirt with the blade from one side to the other it began to dry out, it was almost perfect for packing and moving. We soon had most of it bladed to the middle and packed down hard. Next was to cut in ditches and to set how wide the finished road top would be, the borrowed tractor was small so it took allot of passes to cut the ditches in deep enough, but in time we had the road looking pretty good. Next we had to back blade the other side of the ditch, so that we could drive thought the ditches if we needed to. Once this was done with many more passes we hooked the harrows on behind the blade and started to drag and blade any rough spots. Then we packed the road with the pickup truck finding all the soft spot and really packing them down. Then back to the tractor and blade, we filled in all the holes and pulled the edges of the road back up after the truck had pushed them out. By now the roadbed was pretty firm but it still had two or three soft spots so we left it for a couple of days to dry out. Then we loaded the 400-gallon water tank into the truck, filled it, and packed the road again. Now the soft spots showed up and we just keep packing and then blading dirt back into the holes and pulling the edges up until no more soft spots were left.

Finishing touches

We still needed to know if the ditches would drain the water away from the road, we again were blessed with more rain, about an inch of it in less then a hour. That filled up any low spots in the ditches to show us where we needed to cut them down a bit more. It also showed us when to cut in side ditches to drain off any water along side of the road.

Now we have a well draining road and ditches, this is very important - for if you have water sitting in the ditches or along side the road it will only soak up the road bed and soften it, you will soon have a soft spot and then ruts. Now that the road is pretty much finished we still have one low spot along the road that needs to be drained; a major ditch needs to be cut in or a culvert has to be put under the road. We decided to cut a major ditch and use the dirt to build up a low spot, it worked out very well.

The last thing we need was to put on some gravel or sand. We had a neighbor put a couple of inches of sand and small rock on top, and then we packed that down and smooth it out, and now we have an all weather road. When we had the sand put on it is deeper in some spots then other’s so I just take the wheel barrow and move it around as any holes show up.

The financial cost was very cheap, the sand and rock on top cost 2 days of work traded to the neighbor helping him move a barn, but the rest was my own time and very much enjoyed this job and then about $50.00 for fuel in the tractor. Over all I am very happy with the price, as we had bought one 17 tonne load of gravel from the local pit and it cost $420.00. It didn’t go very far, it only covered the approach off the county roadway. We had heard that it could cost as much as $10,000.00 to $15,000.00 to have someone make the road and gravel it for us. I won’t say I would want any big heavy equipment to come over the road but for our pickup and minivan it will give us many years of service in all weather.

Tags: Homesteading, Road building, Simply living, Small scale farming

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Homesteading, Small Scale Farm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.