a boardwalk in the backyard...

Granddad might remember the trouble we went through last year to bushwhack a path to our swamp with the intention to create a swamp boardwalk. Well, even though the pieces have been ready since last year (we have a very friendly neighbor) we were finally able to actually put them in place last week!


Together with actually friendly neighbors Dough and Bill I got the heavy pieces in their general alignment and used the next couple days to fine tune angles, heights and make up filler corner pieces. The pieces are mostly made of 4x4 ish hardwood pallets with an assortment of recycled wood scraps, including old 2x4 & 1x6 decking and packaging wood from Lowe's. I tried to stay away from (new) pressure treated wood - no sense in leaching a bunch of chemicals into our pristine New York State protected wetlands :-)

We have just about enough pallet pieces to make it to the "creek", which is my goal for this year, or phase 1 of the getting to the back forest project. I'll keep my eyes open for more hardwood pallets this year and hopefully next summer, when the ground is relatively dry, Bill will help me out again!

Our toddler Simon and I also made another hiking path to cut through the forested area between the goat pasture and the swamp. Hubbie and I have to do some major chainsawing later to remove the leftover treetop from the maple that came down right over the planned path, but other than that is should be fairly straight forward with my trusty machete and hacksaw. Before we know it we'll be able to hike all the way around the swamp, the forest, the pasture and the meadow without walking anywhere twice, yay.