Turn Your Yard Into a Dirt Farm

- Tired of maintaining plant life in your yard?
- Want to make some extra cash selling dirt and dust?
- Did they make you read The Grapes of Wrath in High School?
- Ever thought of raising camels?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then you may be interested in our step by step dirt farm process. Just follow our simple instructions and all of your dirt farm dreams will be realized. Within weeks you can have your own profitable and enjoyable dirt farm that may (or may not) produce actual profits and/or enjoyment.

1. The first step is to fall under the misapprehension that you can improve upon the grass that grows naturally in your back-yard (you cannot) . This is like thinking you can improve the salt water off your local beach. Mother Nature has spent eons determining the grass that is most suitable to the conditions of your yard. It may be the back-hair of grass, but it is yours. Fight it all you want, long after you have departed your mortal form, your yard will still be covered with back-hair. Just like your back.


The back hair of grass. Though this may look bleak, after you see the end result, this will look like Ireland during a wet spring.


2. The next step is to remove all forms of organic life from your yard. If at all possible, you should employ the most inefficient, dangerous and environmentally harmful method available. Naturally controlled burning would be your first choice. However, in disadvantageous burning conditions, you may have to select an alternate method. We used a hand-held tiller. Hand-held is to tiller as bite-sized is to sea urchin. The main difference between tilling and burning is that fire doesn't hurt when it hits a rock.

Don't forget mammals when removing life forms from the yard. If you have a dog that loves the yard, and you have no way of keeping her out of it, you must sit her down and tell her, in plain English, that she should not walk into the yard anymore. After that, you should speak with the birds.

Once you have vibrated the filings from your mouth and you have honed the earth to a suitable degree, so that nothing remains but dirt - pure, unfiltered dirt, you should pay someone to supply the crucial ingredient... dirt!

Readers who have become familiar with the recurring dramatic themes in this blog will recognize, in the adding of dirt to dirt, a leitmotif characterized by the futile relocation of geological objects, the moving of rocks, the digging of holes and so on. Typically this leitmotif is used to introduce the well known and much beloved character, "Cousin Doug".


Cousin Doug adds 22 piles of dirt, to... the dirt.

Each pile counts as repayment of .0023% of Doug's debt incurred as a result of this event.




After painstakingly raking every particle of new dirt, we were able to recreate the exact look of the yard before any dirt had been added.




Finally, one of the local merchants was able to convince us that, if we sprayed soaking wet clumps of green paper on top of the fresh dirt, grass would miraculously spring from the mix. Sounds good right?! How much for that?!


Apparently we will pay money for anything.


In the next installment.....


The Ruedigs frolic on their verdant new lawn!

uh.. It's still dirt.

Finished Product

We promised ourselves that we would post more often now that we are working on the house regularly again...but of course, we get lazy. As a filler post, here are some pics of the finished kitchen. With cabinet doors. And finished trim!


We have cabinet doors! And complete crown molding! And fully-painted trim!


And all the cabinets have side panels, too!


Once again, our beloved counter. We can't tell you how much we love it.

...and we're back!

Spring is here! And like the birds, crocuses and wind-blown Doritos bags on Ashmont Street, we are coming back to life!

We have spent the last 5 months just enjoying the new kitchen and adjusting to a low plaster diet. We have even entertained (we are always 'entertaining', but apparently there's a difference).


(not the kitchen)

We are going to tackle the dining room next, but first, we have a few house-keeping chores to finish up. Nothing too big, but we'll share them anyway because we're proud of ourselves for even the smallest tasks and because you have all been so pushy about our blog vacation.

The toilet in our bathroom had always swiveled a bit. This isn't something that you generally want from a toilet, but it proved to be somewhat helpful when you needed to face a certain direction, or, you know, when you need to turn to talk to someone without straining your neck. Then we noticed a little leaking in the kitchen ceiling - our NEW kitchen ceiling - and so good bye swivel toilet. (don't worry, we're keeping the reclining toilet)


This is the hole that we've been pooping in for the last year and a half. No, we're joking, of course. We took the toilet up and found this. Hmm...wax ring totally slacking off on its job.


Need to put down a new collar, but the flange of the pipe is old and doesn't have holes in the right places. No news here - it seems everything in this house is unique and doesn't fit the standard. Adam had to do some modifications to get it mounted and in place.


Drilled some holes, put in some nuts and bolts, and had to cut them down to size.


Ah, beautiful. Stable and waterproof with new wax ring, though less convenient when you need to turn from side to side.

Oh, and we also cleaned the sink drain and found some buried treasures.

Yummy. Adam would like to point out his obvious lack of culpability with regards to the giant wad of hair.

Speaking of eating, have you ever eaten part of your own house? No? Of course not! Houses are for squirrels to eat! For example, this is the portion of our porch that was recently eaten by squirrels! Perhaps they had buried an acorn...

One day there was no hole, then suddenly...hole. They chewed their way through some weakened shingles. Not acceptable.


Adam removes the nest, and eats it for revenge. He also replaces the shingles.


Beautiful work. Now just paint the new shingles, and keep on going until the whole porch is painted, too.

On a Break (Obviously)

So yes, we've been on a bit of a break, just enjoying our functioning kitchen. We've dabbled a bit in re-seeding the back yard (which has proven to be tricky), improving the guest room, unpacking the thousands of books we own...but nothing truly worth of a blog entry.

We promise we'll be back to work soon. Next up: the dining room.

Counter Revolution

Ladies and Gentlemen , we are proud to announce a new addition to our family. On friday, September 5th at 11:30 am we became the proud owners of countertops.


They weighed approximately 714 lbs. 10 oz, and labor seemed very painful.


We have already begun to lose our skills at balancing cereal bowls and glasses of juice on the sink edge. And it is significantly more difficult to get at the silverware. However, on the whole the countertops have been a positive addition.


We celebrated Friday night by inviting all of our friends over to spill some red wine. I am proud to say we christened the counter with its first drinking game. Reagan may tell you she won, but really, my friends, can there be winners and losers in such games? Certainly not!



To give you an idea of the true expanse of countertop, this salad is in a 20 gallon bowl. It fed 10 people for dinner.

Defense wall complete!

We have now completed the walls around the front yard. Now only approximately 50% of the trash gets into our plants.






Rather than a big mound of dirt and mulch, we have a defined front yard. It makes it all look so clean! We can now take a brake from yard work...well, work on the front yard.

Trash Defense

This past weekend we focused our attacks on the front yard...still. The battle is not quite won, but we are closing in on the enemy. The enemy, by the way, is the trash that blows down our street and is left by the thoughtful kids who buy candy at the corner store. In order to defend our yard and new plants, we had planned a while ago to build a stone wall. This would also help to level our yard and retain some of the dirt, but that is incidental.

First, though, Adam finished the stone walkway from our front porch to the driveway.


View from the driveway.


Pretty fancy work.


Reagan was in charge of laying the stones in front of the larger bluestone slabs (but Adam helped).

So onto our defense walls...we used the same flat stones as in the pathway to make most of the wall, but as "fence posts" we used some of the larger, irregular stones that Adam dug up from the yard when he was making the too-big holes for our trees (at least some part of that operation was useful).

We dug up the front of the yard, set the stones in place, and poured a little bit of concrete at the base to keep the stones in place.

Then we put the dirt back on top to fill it in and covered it back up with mulch. Hopefully this allows for a nice long curing time for the concrete?

Overall, this front section of wall only took us a couple hours (with help from the neighborhood kids, of course).

And we're done for the time-being...who knows when we'll be able to finish, but at least we've protected that little section of the yard from the invasive trash in our neighborhood.