50 cents a pound for rocks? I'm a millionaire!
Where I live in Rhode Island, we have so many rocks that we hate them. I fantasize about living somewhere where I can dig a hole and not hit a 400 lb boulder. I would really like to be able to use my rear end rototiller on my JD 750 without bashing it up on buried rocks. It seems no matter how many you take out, more appear next year.
I have a natural rock formation in my front yard that is now a rock garden, but may becme a fish pool complete with waterfall next year. I have a "pet" rock near my house that we dug out when diggin my cellar hole. It was too big to load on a truck and take away, so we made it part of the landscape. My entire road frontage consists of an ancient stonewall that is covered with moss.
How we get rid of them here is to bring in a big backhoe and dig a long and very deep pit. We then roll the boulders in and cover the last few feet up with topsoil. The last time I did this 2 years ago, the pit was about 15 feet deep, 10 feet wide and about 75 feet long. This took care of all the rocks in back of my barn. Still have more to go.
I have a "rock dump" in my backyard, and anyone who wants to adopt any of these things is welcome to them if they promise to just give them a good home.
By the way, I have not done it yet, but the thing about drilling holes and using "pins and feathers" to split rocks is a method used to the present day. However, the newer method is to use a jack hammer mounted on the end of an excavator boom to just break them up so they can be dug out and the pieces loaded. Usually on big building projects like housing developments, the people doing the work will bring in a portable rock crusher and load the smaller boulders or pieces from larger boulders in and crush into small rock for road beds, etc. Crushed rock around here is very cheap.
Most of the rock we have in R.I. is granite, and even drilling it with a jack hammer is tough. Another method that you guys in Texas are probably not going to believe is to drill the holes like described, but then fill the holes up with water right before a cold snap in the winter. The freezing water will split the rock real quick. But, again, the problem is drilling the holes in the granite in the first place.
Lastly, the one good thing is there is so much crushed granite around here (any size you want!) that we are able to make great high-strenght concrete. We can get anything from pea stone (granite the size of a pea) up to several inches. Putting crushed rock about half an inch in size makes great high-strenght concrete.
I have lived on my 3 Rhode Island acres for about 26 years now, and I am still fighting rocks constantly. But the job just got easier since I put a FEL on my JD750.
I think I'll go home and weigh all my rocks to see how rich I am at 50 cents a pound.
