Tiling the Field

Work commenced on tiling the field this week. I went to the land yesterday to bring some lunch to the hardworking crew.

                               From the left: Barry, Bill, Gary and Jeff

Tiling the field is a tedious job. First, Jeff digs the trench and puts the topsoil on one side of the trench, the subsoil on another side of the trench and the excess is given to Bill to transport to another location. Then, the bottom of the trench is tamped and smoothed with the excavator bucket. Next, Bill and Gary transports gravel to the trench and Jeff "heels" (translation for me: using the bottom of the bucket) the gravel to make it flat in preparation for putting in the tile. Barry puts the tile pipe into the trench bit by bit and then about a foot more of the gravel is put on to the pipe and then this gravel is evened out. Barry lays the filter fabric on the gravel. My husband who was there had did to say about Barry's work: "Barry was the guy in charge of the most physically draining(pun intended) work of the day. He was shoveling stone, rolling and placing pipe(250 ft rolls), measuring depth of pipe & stone placement, and laying fabric."
Wait, we're not done yet. Then Jeff comes back to put on the subsoil, tamps this down and then puts on the topsoil and then tamps this down so that the field looks undisturbed once more.

Way back in June I located a video of How to Put Drain Tile in the Field created by Hans Walter-Peterson of the Cornell University Cooperative Extension, we now have our own videos for posterity.