Road Building 1

The picture to the left shows high quality woven landscape fabric on my property that was crossed repeatedly with emply logging trucks on the way in and loaded logging trucks on the way out. (The mulch wasn't present when the logging trucks were using this route.) The rut occured because this area wasn't crowned and held water which eventually led to this small dip. Still there is no tearing from the fully loaded trucks. The picture above is the back entrance of a former Class 3 dairy barn (Roughly 1940 to 1970) that has been used for horses (Roughly 1980 to 2000) and then equipment (2001 to present). When a cow or horse stands in a dry barn and then exits during wet conditions, the dry hoof picks up a little wet dirt and moves it away from the entrance. This eventually leaves a large hole. (One of my friends claims we can't rule out the possiblity that all dairy farmers looked for a hole and built their barn so the cows had to walk through it, but I really like my theory better.) About 2001 this hole was covered with landscape fabric and then gravel. The first picture shows the intact fabric in the bottom of the hole. The fabric has limited the gravels trip downward and has limited the red dirts movement upward. No additional gravel has been added over the past 10 years. Contrast this to the picture in the Roadbuilding 2 post. I figure if I am going to do build a good road the right way, I will use a fabric under the initial gravel. However, there is rural road building expertise in the Natural Resource Conservation Office if you wish to get an expert opinion.