Tampering with the shelter

It’s been a couple of weeks since we last worked on the shelter for the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust in the corner of the orchard. We took another delivery of material and the goal today was to have all the uprights and cross braces securely in place.

The day began with digging the final two holes to hold the middle verticals. We went down about 700mm and carefully placed the posts so they were square with the corners and dead in the middle.

The tamper tool is necessary to pack the hole firmly and securely. I dropped in rocks at the base of the post, bashed them well into place and filled up with layers of clay and soil.

What seems weird is that the volume of material removed is never enough to fill the hole again, despite a huge volume of post being in there too. But we had good tools that made sure the structure is absolutely rock solid.

The cross pieces at the top and up the middle was secured in place and some of the wood ends were sawn flush. We are pretty much ready to start fixing the supports for the walls and roof. Probably three more days needed to complete after today.