A Pile of Work in Front of Us

My neighbor has been using my backhoe a few hours each day after work to collect rocks and pile them in our front yard. In the course of a week, he has used 15 gallons of diesel, but he has accumulated quite a pile of rocks! Some of these rocks weigh over a ton each. (you might find the 3 gallon bucket in the picture to get a sense of scale). These are rocks that were laying on top of the ground here on our farm, exposed by years of erosion.

We have a home-built hydraulic stone splitter, but these rocks are simply too heavy and too thick for it, so I plan to score these rocks 2" deep with a gas chop saw, then drive steel chisels into the grooves in order to split them into manageable chunks. These chunks, we will dress with a chisel to create the stones that will face the main tower on the front of the house. The "pitch faced" look will be similar to the small tower, but with arched windows and a slate roof atop (instead of a castellated balcony). One of the stonemason's sons plans to visit in a week or two and help with the stonework on the exterior of the house. The fall weather is perfect for this kind of outside work and I think we've got enough rocks to get him started!