The yard. Or lack thereof.

This is what Mike and I did on Saturday (mostly Mike, as I was only available when Mim was asleep):

We rented a sod cutter from Timp Rentals and cut our lawn all up so we can regrade it all.  The sod cutter was crazy.  I used it for awhile and was surprised at how hard it was shaking.  I was also surprised when my forearms started to swell up later that the day.  I felt like I was bruised from wrist to elbow.  Apparently shaking violently for 45 minutes can actually do physical damage.  Mike used it for 2 or 3 hours, but he's ok- he's a lot stronger than I am. 
We get a lot of questions about what we're doing with the yard- so here's the plan.

This is before we started ripping everything up.  There was a cement retainer around the front yard that also enclosed the yard to the north (this picture is taken pointing northeast).  It also bisected the property running east-west, separating the yard area from a field/pasture area (Mike's grandma used to board horses on that side of the property).  This whole project started because we have no need for a field and we want to put a privacy fence in that will enclose the entire backyard.  We didn't want to have 2 levels of yard, either.  We wanted to make the property into one big yard and give it a more cohesive feeling.  So, that meant ripping out the cement retainer wall.

So that's gone now.  We hired that part out, Coleman Xcavation (I'm pretty sure that's how they spelled it) came in with a back hoe and pulled it out.  It looked like pulling teeth- they claw hand would come down and grab a section of the cement, wiggle it back and forth a bit, and then pull it out.  Fun to watch. 
Next step is pulling the sod off, which we did Saturday, and this week will be tilling and regrading the lawn.  And tilling the field (Mike killed everything in the field a few weeks ago).  And then getting our grow boxes in so we can still plant some things before it's too late.  This fall we'll reseed the lawn and maybe get a fence in (but maybe not, because those things are expensive and this has already cost us more than we were planning). 
I decided to publish our plan for a few reasons, 1) because we get asked about it so much and 2) to solicit help.  Seriously, feel free to come haul sod or let us borrow your tiller or something.  Oh, the other question we get asked about a lot- What are we doing with the sod?  We're piling it in the back for now, once it decomposes we'll have some good compost.  We're keeping the back corner of our lawn field-y for now, so the sod has somewhere to go, and because that's where we'll eventually plant our mini orchard and I plan on putting rocks down around the trees anyway, so no point in planting it with grass.  We'll just keep killing the weeds there.

Mim says hi.