Rockin’ the Causeway

 Our road is considered by some to be, well, challenging.

The Causeway

One stretch runs a single lane through the middle of a beaver pond.  We have affectionately named it “The Causeway”.

Now the causeway is stable, but not too wide.  And it seems to be gradually becoming more narrow.  One reason is basic, there is vegetation on either side of the traveled part of the road, the non graveled part, and as it grows it does have a tendency to creep inwards.  This is being trimmed of course, but well nature is nature and it likes to expand its foot print. 

However the bigger issue is, you guessed it, the beavers.  By now I am guessing that there is an assumption that we dislike beavers, but that is not true – we find them to be incredibly fascinating.  We do however find them challenging, and in some cases, like the fencing around the conduits the challenge is quite fun – and it feels like a real win when something works.

On to the narrowing causeway.  These two beaver ponds were likely a single unit at one time.  The road across does have a conduit, with wired screening out beyond the upstream side and the levels between the two ponds remain the same – the conduit now never gets plugged. 

You can barely see the welded wire mesh at this conduit inlet

Now with a road across the pond, the beavers must cross the road itself to get from one side to the other.  They are, of course, water creatures so climb up one bank, and slide down the other.  Over time one can identify paths that they have followed as they are wearing down the banks.

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So what to do ??

We have decided that we need to widen the road and road base expanding a bit into the current water area a foot or two in each direction.  And like most things this is easier said than done.  There is currently no land adjacent to the road to spread the gravel on so step one is to put some large rocks on either side of the causeway – into the water.  The plan is that this will be a base that we will be able to put smaller rocks on and finally gravel.  Now of course some of this will be done via the local sand and gravel guys – but we are trying to see how far we can get on our own with step one.  The big rocks.

Large rocks now at side of causeway

We are now working our way down the non-aqueous part of the road and attempting to dig up largeish rocks (with our trusty Kubota) and are loading these into a trailer.

Mining beside the road

A very big rock

A trailer full of rocks

The trailer is then brought to the causeway and the rocks are plucked out one by one and laid (dropped?) at the side of the causeway.

Away it goes

We are finding that this takes a remarkably large number of these rocks, and is rather slow to do as each one is handled individually.  That said I think we are making pretty good progress.  We are trying hard to only take the rocks where it will not negatively impact the look of the side of the road.  This means leaving some of course, particularly where we think getting them out will leave a mess, but we have managed to fill our trailer six times so far, and will keep going.

One problem though …. These rocks are very heavy.  And heavy rocks into trailer means heavy trailer.  Add in a sharp rock ……..  oops