Rock Wall Update - Still Building

Rock wall update

It seems that I'm always accumulating rocks because of one project or another. This past couple months Adam has been moving the loose rock out of the new dairy goat pasture. This makes it much, much easier for us to keep the pasture in good condition. I like to weedwack the non-palatable plants down after the goat have browsed the pasture and moved on to the new pen. Thus the good plants can grow back without being shaded out by the bad. Now without all those rocks interfering with the weedwacking, the pastures will be easier to tend. 

Another recent source of rock has been the pig pasture. The young pigs are now rooting more aggressively, churning up rocks. So I've been moving wheelbarrowfuls of rock just to keep the pasture walkable. While the pigs can navigate the rocks just fine, I practically break my neck trying to get to the feed troughs. 

What to do with rocks? Rock walls, of course! 

I've been moving the rocks up to the driveway, creating low walls. 

It's all dry stack. No cement. The larger, nicer looking rocks are on the outside, while the uglier rocks are used for the back wall. And the small rocks fill in the middle. The white rope is just to make a straight line to follow so the wall does wiggle-waggle it's way along the driveway. 

The top two photos shows the wall extending up to the top of the drive, fairly close to the house. The photo above shows the next section going down the driveway. 

Above, here's the next section heading down and around the bend. 

Above, the lower section that meets the fork in the driveway, and the wall that was built earlier. 

Above shows that just piling rocks isn't the whole job. In order to have room to work, the back side of the wall area needs to be cleared of weeds, saplings, and brush. So that's a job unto itself. Around here, things grow rather densely. 

A few more feet and this run of rock wall will be complete. Then we can start to tackle the other side of the driveway. I figure there will be plenty of rock to build that one too. It will just take time to gather up the rocks. Opening up more garden spots or upgrading more pasture area should reveal plenty of rock. This whole farm is built atop lava, so I'm not going to run out of rocks anytime soon.