Show us yer mettle

Regulars may remember this.

There's a story they love to tell here of when Scottish Water decided that the water from the loch wasn't good enough and they decided pipe the water in from elsewhere. They went through drill bit after drill bit as the water main inched it's way, bit by bit (ha ha). The bedrock hereabouts is hard - and it doesn't split or crack or give way at all.

I spent hours with pick axe, chisels and tears trying to get through the bedrock for the lighting in the byre. We still haven't solved the lighting in the byre issue and are making do with portable lights and a cable stretched across from the house. Long term we need a power supply and I'd prefer it to come in underground rather than overhead.

As we had a digger on site for the strainers I asked the man to do this trench - the bedrock had defeated me. Most of the trench was done in five minutes - but there was a stretch of bedrock - maybe half a metre that took over half an hour.

A JCB with a hammer action drill bit. The digger man was placing the drill bit on the rock and then levering the whole digger up so it's full weight was on the end of the drill and hammering down. Oh so slowly the rock turned to dust. Digger main was astonished. (Although the hardest rock he's ever come across was in Laide apparently - there's a smutty joke in there somewhere).

So here's to steel! The astonishing strength and resilience of the stuff.

In one short day (it's winter you know) Digger man underfilled the fencing (fencing over lumpy ground leaves gaps under the fence so Digger man underfilled the length with stones and turf), he cleared up the couple of kilometers of old fencing we'd taken up, - filled up my raised bed for the trees (yippeeee!) and made that trench.

Meanwhile Aberdeenshire busmen exhibit great wisdom.

I have immense respect for Stoney and his pigheaded stubborness - and I share a similar outlook (although I lack his skill, strength, stamina, experience and more besides) - I'm quite happy to work very hard doing things the non-mechnical way - and I take pride in the effort. But that Digger man saved weeks and weeks and weeks of work. It would have been nigh on impossible to get the strainers into bedrock without the digger - and as it was on site anyway I'm full of glee and admiration for the extra bits we got him to do. It cost us about £300 - many weeks of food - but it has moved us forward tremendously.