Dotahn and I got to the school early, much before everyone else because we were eager to inspected our concrete poles from yesterday. One of them was going to be no good, but the other two were looking solid. Robert was keen for us to get started on the pond, and to me that sounded like a much more fun thing to do than making poles of concrete. We decided to make the pond bang in the middle of the farm, with a totally non-uniform shape.

The farm as it was at the start of the day

A rough outline of where the pond is going to be

The first task was to level the area where the pond would be (remember that the school is in the side of the hill, so everything is on a slope). We marked a large rectangle on the ground, and started clearing the mud from it. We had a couple of shovels to dig and a wheelbarrow to move the dug out earth. We were extremely lucky that the mud was soft, could be easily dug out and there were barely any rocks. Despite that, it was really hard labour and even after a few hours of back-breaking work, not even 1/4th of the rectangle had been levelled.

Progress by lunch break

We were then joined by Romel & Nigel, and with their help we started making good progress. Robert came by with snacks, and also joined in on the levelling effort. By afternoon, we had done a remarkable job, with a large portion of the rectangle being done.

By afternoon

We decided to continue for as long as we could since there were no kids around today and since we didn’t want to let go of the momentum we had built up. By the time we decided to call it a day and put the tools away, the rectangle was more or less flat. We were all super tired but also proud of the job done so far.

By the end of the day