Admitting Defeat

I tried.  I tried very hard.  I even dedicated my last couple of days off to getting the task done.  It was just too much.  The task I am referring to is finishing filling in the foundation of the brewery.  I had thought that after all the work done by my friends, I could finish putting down the sand and then it would be a quick job to put in the last of the regular fill.

I made a real effort of it, trying to put in an hour after work each night, and then worked until it was too dark to see on my day off. This got me pretty close to finished with the sand, but drove home the point that trying to get the other fill in would be an enormous task.  Unlike the sand, which was placed next to the foundation, the fill pile is positioned farther away, but still in  such a manner that an excavator can easily scoop and place the fill.  Using my small bucket loader would require driving down to the lower pasture and then back up to the foundation to deliver each bucket.  Then I would have to shovel the fill into place.  I began to have horrifying visions of being the latest unfinished foundation in rural New England.

Knowing that I very much need to get going on the superstructure of the building convinced me that it was time to take drastic measures.  I called my neighbor Lonn.  He came out, took a look around, and opined that he could probably finish the filling in in about a day.  Decision made.

While I feel a bit defeated and deflated by not being able to finish the back-filling of the foundation on my own, I am happy to be getting on with things.  Winter is coming and we need to get the superstructure started.  I know most of my volunteers had expected we would have started on that a long time ago and so did I.

I do not know if we will be able to have things done by the end of October, but at least we will be moving on to the next phase of construction. Now where did I leave my hammer?