After moving over to the midway in the yard (the area going between the house and the garden, effectively dividing the grounds in half), I've been focusing my gravel laying energy to covering this area as much as possible. Because the ground here has been mushy for quite a while, being bad enough to almost take a shoe, I had to get this ground covered up as much and as deeply as possible so I can be able to move vehicular traffic over this area without incident. Many of the tasks that I will be conducting on these grounds will involve me needing to be able to move vehicles and other equipment over this midway to get to the eastern part of the yard, or to just turn around by pulling through the area, around the east yard and back around through the southern section of the yard and back into the midway again. We won't be able to do this if every vehicle ends up sinking in the mud badly enough to need double the tow chains and a vehicle setting on more solid ground in the main driveway to be able to pull without getting stuck itself. So with that I've been dumping gravel on the ground then driving over the newly spread gravel, sometimes pulling forward and going back over the rock to widen the coverage and mashing of gravel into the mud so I can come back over this compressed rock/mud combo with even more gravel. One of the problems that I was having with the gravel on the mushy ground, especially with the heavy truck driving over the area, was with the tires mashing into the soft ground, pushing the gravel underneath it into the mud, but then mashing a gravel/mud mix from the sides of the tires. Even when I pulled off the area or when I just kept going backwards, I would leave a track in the ground that was still covered with gravel but was deep enough that it would be a problem later on if left unchecked. To help this along I would have to kick the side ooze of gravel mud back into the tire track, then drive forward over this area to mash the reapplied gravel mud further into the soft ground, then do the same behind the tire before going backwards deeper into the midway once again. Of course just merely walking over the soft ground with the freshly laid gravel helped settle the rock into the mud, nowhere near as much as four tires rolling over it but still a little something. In a way walking over the soft ground was a bit of a controlled settling of the gravel into the mud. One bonus that I did get from spreading this extra gravel over this area was that it allowed me to make the ground from the driveway up to the side of the walkway even out. The walkway is no longer elevated from the original ground as the layers of gravel effectively raised the ground up. Not every square foot of the ground in the midway was soft and mushy though. The biggest problem was the area directly across from the porch, what would appear to be the middle third of the length of the house. This area was the worst for the soft ground. Further east over the midway the ground starts to get hard again so the biggest concentration of gravel will end up being over this middle third of the area running along the length of the house. As far as I'm concerned, if it takes 3x the gravel to get this area completely covered and hardened back up to where I no longer need to worry about any kind of softness in the ground, it is totally worth it. Due to its age, the porch that's been serving as a platform and landing for us to enter and exit the house as well as situate appliances and other items for random use will end up needing to be replaced. Under the porch, erosion has taken its toll, washing dirt from this area, under the house and out of the other side, taking lots of soil with it. This is part of the reason the middle third of the midway has always been mushy, its been a funnel of sorts to channel water from up slope through this area and under the house versus just evenly spreading over all of the grounds so as to prevent an over saturation of the grounds. As part of trying to strengthen the grounds of the midway, I'll have to shore up the ground under the porch as well as the grounds on the other side of the house in the chicken yard where erosion has taken its toll just as well. This will most likely be done with the use of masonry blocks placed to serve as barriers while I add some soil to fill in the eroded spots under the porch then covering this up with gravel so as to level off the ground enough so that I can reposition the concrete blocks that are used to support the porch's posts. I may even use bags of concrete where the soil eroded instead, ensuring a solid foundation for the concrete blocks to set on, and also ensuring that further erosion, with the help of the gravel will no longer be a problem from the midway all the way under the house and beyond.
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May 2023
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