Now that we’re living on the land, a new set of priorities is showing their urgency. We’ve got to get the parking area and shop ingress area under control. I have five ten-wheeler loads of sand to spread out. The clay we have here is just unmanageable when wet—that’s the best way to say it. The sand will
wash away easier, but it is exponentially easier to spread out and manipulate.
The goal is to get the slope and shape I want. Once it’s established, I plan on topping the sand with concrete washout. Concrete washout is excellent as a base layer before stone or gravel. Once set up and packed in, most of the water will run off the
surface. Then, I can add stone to the top surface. Like the driveway, this will be a slow, ongoing process as the budget allows.
Immediately after spreading the sand and packing it in as best as I could with the tractor, I spread out some #57 limestone on top just to get a single lane into a single parking spot under the lean-to for the
family daily driver. This isn’t really the order of operations, though. I really should have put down a larger stone or concrete washout as a base on top of the sand, but I do not have access to anything else right now. I can’t find anyone to get #4 or #56 stone. We’re fighting the rain and material availability when it’s not raining. I had a pile of 57 on hand, so that’s what I used. I’ll likely have to scrape most of the stone off when I can get some washout and reapply it to the top of the
washout. Either way, it’s more work and a bit more wasteful right now, but it’s just the hand we were dealt.
