Digging through Caliche......

 7:33 am - Sunday - March 30th - TWW - 47° F, humidity 33%, wind 8 mph out of the south.....cloudy today with a chance of rain, and a forecast high of 64° F.  On this date in 2014 TLE and I were running the zip line course at "Out of Africa" near Cottonwood, AZ.....

Well, doing any spray painting this weekend has been taken off the schedule by the daily winds we've had the past few days, so we did the only other thing we could do.....dig post holes for the new posts to which we will affix the new 6 foot welded fencing that will surround our refurbished greenhouse.  As you know, digging any holes here over 12 inches in depth means you must contest with Caliche rock (a soluble accumulation of calcium carbonate which is found in arid, and semi arid areas such as Arizona and West Texas).  We knew we would have our work cut out for us since these post holes had to be dug to a minimum of 24 inches in depth. We needed to dig 5 of these holes, and managed to get 3 of them dug before we had to head into town to get more water.....

The post in the distance (northwest corner), and the post in the foreground had lots of Caliche rock through which to dig.  You can see the white Caliche rock dust next to the post hole.

The post hole at the southwest corner of the greenhouse plot had NO Caliche rock, and took about half the time to dig as the other two.

......we have two posthole diggers so Charles and I were able to dig two holes at the same time.  The going was tough, as expected, but we had the first two holes dug in about an hour.  While Charles went to hookup his truck to the water trailer I began to dig the third hole.  Surprisingly, there was NO Caliche rock in the third hole, and I had it done in about 30 minutes with Phyllis' help (when I was digging with the posthole digger she held the pry bar, and when I used the pry bar she held the posthole digger....saved me from having to bend over to pick them off the ground....every little bit helps!  Thank you Phyllis!).

After digging two post holes I was ready to head to the water station with everyone to acquire 1800 more gallons of water....we've been going through a lot of water lately!  We were there an back in a little over an hour, at which time I helped Charles pump the 1800 gallons of water into the upper tank at the water tower.  We use a Predator (Harbor Freight) water pump to transfer the water from the IBC water totes to the tower, and it is actually faster to transfer the water to the tower, than to fill the tanks at the water station....that little water pump really moves water quickly!  By the time we finished I was ready to change clothes, watch a little golf, and take a nap!

By the way, our little orchard of fruit/nut trees are beginning to bloom, and leaf out very quickly in the warming weather....

Around 3:30 pm TLE had me light the Sea-B-Que in preparation for grilling two large Top Sirloin steaks we've had in the freezer for a while.  TLE and Phyllis prepared cream cheese stuffed, bacon wrapped jalapeño poppers for an appetizer, side salads, and baked potatoes to go with the steaks, which turned out great....

The stuffed/wrapped jalapeños are kind of hidden behind my wine glass (Pinot Noir - Sonoma), but you can see a few of them on my plate

Medium rare....just like we like them!

.....of course, we're down to the 'Elite Eight' in this year's installment of 'March Madness', and there were two games being played Saturday.  The first, between #3 seed Texas Tech and #1 seed Florida Gators was a great game, and came down to the last 3 minutes, at which time Texas Tech was up by 10 points.  It seemed like they had a 'lock' on the game, but they managed to come from ahead to finish down by 5 points as time expired.  There is a chance that all four #1 seeds will make it to the Final Four this year.....I don't remember the last time that happened.  There will be two more 'Elite Eight' games on Sunday, which will tell that tale.

Thanks for stopping by!