Three Scoops with an Excavator - PEP BB earthworks.sand.threescoops

I don't know how strict the rules are, but hopefully these pictures work. If not it's not a big deal, because I have another ditch to clean this week. I also don't have an excavator, so hopefully a backhoe is close enough.

For traversing uncomfortably steep hills sideways you can extend your hoe out and up the hill to lower and shift your center of gravity up the hill.


The hole in the ditch prior to doing any work.


Another picture of the hole, but mostly a picture of the mountains and leaves.


First I backed into the hole and pulled the dirt towards the backhoe.


I'm almost done here. I pushed a few more buckets of dirt down the hill to fill in the area farther from the ditch.


A picture from the bottom as I was leaving.

There's no cell service where I'm working, and I couldn't remember the rules exactly. Here are some more pictures with individual scoops.

The preview isn't showing any of the attachments. I cut the size down to 25% of the original. I guess if they don't show up I'll have to figure out how to make it work later.

Here's some digging I did in summer 2 years back. Been good fun!

Took a lot more than three scoops to built our hugel mound, but here’s a few pics.

I had SO MUCH FUN playing with the excavator. I love the idea of having access to big machinery to accomplish large earthworks projects.
Attachment 1   - Your untouched soil and you in the excavator
Attachment 2   - Action pic of you dumping scoop #1
Attachment 3   - Action pic of you dumping scoop #2
Attachment 4   - Action pic of you dumping scoop #3

I'm so grateful that I could be at Wheaton Labs to learn from Mike Haasl and use Paul's equipment!

Three Scoops with an Excavator at Paul's Wheaton Labs.
Thanks for the patience and pro tips, Mike Haasl! What a wonderful skill to know.  

Here’s some dirt moving I did with a Mini Ex.

Hey PEP-folks,
I started my first hugelbed over the weekend! There will be more on that BB, when it is done enough to submit, but for now I will throw in the 3-scoops pictures for this BB. Fun fact about my property, which is not a geological surprise when you think about the name of the region's major geomorph "the Colombia basalt" - after 8-12in of clay, you're on basalt, nice porous lava rock. The top layer of the basalt is rain rotted enough to tear with the backhoe teeth, but, well, let's just say I am looking forward to building my soil, and the runoff patterns now make more sense. Once the top layer is saturated, water can't go down quickly, so it goes away.
Happy hugling!
Mark