Have I mentioned how much I am enjoying this house-building project? Watching as concrete is poured and walls are erected is truly amazing. I have loved nearly* every minute of it thus far. But, the weekend we spent as a family, hauling and stacking rocks, is one of the house-building memories I will forever cherish.
*("nearly" because I have met my quota of time in a lifespan set aside for shopping ceiling fans online. I just do not care enough to spend another single minute on this.)
We're talking A LOT of rocks!
Years ago, when John and his brother Justin were young, their dad would send them out into the field to "pick up rocks." To hear them tell it, the number of rocks they hauled to the edge of the field and pitched down the hillside over the years was astronomical. Honestly, I'd always assumed the quantity of rocks picked up was just being unintentionally exaggerated -- like lots of romanticized memories from our early years.
But, I have now seen with my own eyes the sheer number of rocks spread across that hillside, and I assure you, there is no exaggeration involved. And, so, when we decided to build a white farmhouse with a stone chimney, we knew we had the rock covered.
Over the course of a long weekend, all five of us pitched in. We hunted for the rocks. We loaded them into the tractor bucket.
We dumped them into the truck bed.
We hauled them from the farm at Center to the farm at Cave City.
And, we stacked them up all nice-and-neatly on pallets near the new house site.
All told, we hauled 10 truck bed's full of rock. It was a weekend-long adventure. We were sore for days.
Now, it's a multi-generational story of dads having their kids pick up rocks.
When we were in the thick of the work, I reminded everyone that one day, we would be able to relax in our new living room and just sit back and admire all the hard work that made that rock chimney possible. John's response: "Sit down and relax in the living room? Do we do that?" This man.