HOLE Happiness!

Oh gosh ! Greg has been in Greg Heaven. Actually, truth be told Greg has been closer to Hell but listening to him you would never know it. We had a hole in the barn yard ("nothing too strange about that"  I hear ranch followers say)....but this hole was THE mother of all holes. Several  months ago one of the main drains leading out of the horse/cow/sheep barn became blocked. Consequently,  it didn't  need a knowledge of rocket science to know exactly what concoction of fecal stench emanated from the nasty little holes in the barn,  I know nothing about rocket science and little about any other type of science but I can recognize the odor of poop and pee......and this poop and pee had become a nasty, smelly, over ripe soup. The last heavy rain storm  over taxed the seriously blocked drain system and Greg could be seen  around the barn yard attempting to divert the bubbling black gaseous liquid overflow before the stalls became a stinking paddling pool. Big brother John dug a ditch, Greg and several of our wonderful WWOOFER  volunteers have spent hours with hoses attempting to discover and clear the blockage and I did my bit too......I faithfully reported whenever and wherever the overflow breached. Well...I thought I was important ! We had a plan, sketched on paper many years ago which appeared to identify the drain system....but somehow it would appear 12 inches didn't used to make a foot and clearly 3 feet didn't make a yard which just added to the frustration. There was no way around it.....the blockage had to be found and to find it we ( uh....Greg) had to find the drain. Clearly a hole had to be dug, the implications of said hole were explained to me in painful (excruciating) detail. My barn yard, my beautiful horse yard would have to have an exploratory hole...holes mean mud and somewhere in my brain I became aware that this hole was going to be more than the average hole.....more than average mud and mountains of mess. Out came the boy's toys.....the big rusty yellow backhoe lumbered and groaned into the stable yard,  the old green Kuchi farm tractor was first to break ground and Greg was in Heaven !  The first hole, three feet from Quest's stall was a baby hole...2 feet by 10 feet by 4 feet deep. Success.....ooops....Greg found the drain ...and broke it.  A geyser of rancid ancient poop and pee exploded into the air .....Greg didn't smell good ! The hole then had to be filled in again ( where were you Malc ?) because it was apparently going in the wrong direction. ( Apparently North South East and West weren't quite where they are now either !) The new hole was started...to fix the break in the broken drain. The second hole 4 feet by 8 feet by five feet deep was Greg's nirvana. Deep in the hole, up to his ankles in smelly sludge and up to his eyes in stinky mud,  he repaired the fractured pipe.  Clearly time to survey the damage and enjoy a  cold Budweiser before flushing the blockage out and refilling the crater he had created. We have a drain again, we have photographs identifying the location and exact measurements ....just in case ! We are ready for the next rain storm, we hope !

I took photographs of the progress of Greg's excavation progress and some other photographs of some views which are clearly much more pleasant to the eye (and the nose). Enjoy.

Take care, keep safe, M