Gregory Kemp

MOUNTAIN CABIN DIY - EPISODE 10: The Jurassic Park Fence

Hillbilly Farmgirl is no ordinary farm girl. Hillbilly Farmgirl can read. Lately she's read dozens of books in preparation for our latest West Virginia DIY project: a vegetable garden. She's developed a robust to-do list: soil testing, seed ordering, buying tools, row design. The list goes on. It's not until task 15 that we have actual crop yields and somewhere in there, written in the margin as an afterthought, is the action item "build eight foot garden fence."

Eight foot? That's huge. She says it's necessary to keep out the deer. I don't know what books she's been reading but I've never seen a deer with a pole vault. But books trump what I say so we're building an eight foot garden fence. 

I learned something. Building a big fence around a quarter-acre garden is no small project. Steep slope. Many, many rocks. The local frost line is 24-inches meaning we need to get the posts two feet underground to prevent them from shifting as the ground freezes. I was going to stick the posts that deep anyway so they didn't tip over but I thought mentioning the frost thing would make me sound smart. 

To select the proper post length I applied the following equation: 8 foot deer leap + 2 foot frost depth = 10 foot post. I think 4 by 4s sound about right. Pressure treated buggers. And for good measure I'll dump some concrete in the holes to make sure nothing moves.   

Installing the posts got complicated. In about half of the cases we found bedrock between 12 and 24 inches below ground which prevented us from getting the posts to an adequate depth. In cases where we could not dig deep enough we decided to put the posts directly on the bedrock and anchor them with ½-inch rebar into the concrete. For this I got you use my Hilti hammer-drill which performed very well.

Posts alone don't make a fence. You need stuff between the posts to keep out the super-deer. I selected barbed-wire (15.5 gauge, 4 point). I picked barbed-wire because of price ($43 per 1340 foot spool), not because I enjoy barbing myself in the neck, gut and groin, because that's what happened as we ran more than a quarter mile of the stuff. We also added chicken-wire at the bottom of the fence to keep out small critters like rabbits and chipmunks. I suggested we bury the chicken-wire twelve feet underground in case we've got deep tunneling rabbits. She didn't think that was funny and almost made me do it.

In the end we have a nice fence. It might be a bit tall. Yes, it's tall.  It's tall like the fence in King Kong or Jurassic Park. I asked the Hillbilly if we were trying to keep out deer or Tyrannosaurus Rex.  She said, "The Tyrannosaurus Rex is a carnivore. It doesn't eat veggies."

Hillbilly probably read that in a book too.

 

Other photos below....

 

We got some free labor from Hillbilly's Aunt Robin and Aunt Sherry. Maine ladies can hoist timber, that's for sure. 

 

Hauling the 4 by 4s to the worksite.

 

We secured the barbed-wire with open hooks and eye hooks that are probably too small to hold back a hungry animal.

 

The rebar in the bedrock.

 

We trimmed the barbs from a hell of a lot of barbed wire to help thread it through the eye-hooks.

 

That's Hillbilly in her smartsuit.

Mountain Cabin DIY - Episode 9: Building a Garden

In Superhero form she's an expert on international nuclear safety, but in human form she's a hillbilly farmgirl. I'm talking about my wife, the Diplomat, soon to be renamed Hillbilly Farmgirl. Each day, 9 to 5, she makes important decisions that I won't pretend to understand but on the weekend she's got vegetables on her mind: a garden full of vegetables. 

That's her dream. It probably comes from her grandmother who has gardened and canned her way to supermarket minimalism buying just hot dogs, eggs, milk, and bread.  Grammy, as she's known, has successfully managed a small 400 square foot garden that provides her with year-round beans, carrots, broccoli, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and many other things including something called swiss chard.  Grammy grows her vegetables during the short summer in Maine and then cans enough for the rest of the year.  She trained Hillbilly Farmgirl.  Now Hillbilly Farmgirl wants her own vegetable garden.  A big garden.  A garden that would make Grammy proud.  The problem, of course, is that we live in a townhouse.  That means our West Virginia mountain just got re-zoned from recreational to agricultural.  I love re-zoning.  Re-zoning requires a lot of earthwork.

The first step was leveling the land.  We did that last fall, terracing about a quarter of an acre.  This was no easy project.  The land slopes at about 4:1.  The ground is about 20% rocks.  Even with my Bobcat 763 this was back-breaking work.  The Bobcat could handle the large rocks without a problem and was helpful in exposing the smaller rocks but using the Bobcat to pick up all these small rocks was as effective as vacuuming up a thousand paperclips.  It's sometimes easier just to bend over and pick up stuff yourself. 

I estimate we moved about 10,000 pounds of rocks by tossing them in the Bobcat bucket and toting them away. We used the largest rocks to build a seven-foot high retaining wall which separates the upper terrace (upper garden) from the lower garden.  Now we've got two areas of native soil each about 700 square feet.

But that's just the start of it.  Turns out the best place for the garden happened to be in the middle of an important road we built in 2008 that gives us access to most of our land so that meant building our very first bypass, aptly named, the Garden Bypass.

Up next…building our garden fence…building the greenhouse…and hopefully planting veggies.

 

Hillbilly Farmgirl at work!

 

Grammy in her kitchen.

 

 

Should give you an idea of the slope of the land.

 

 

This is what happens when you overload the bucket.  Don't worry, it's safe.

 

Awesome views every morning out there. 

 

The biggest rock thus far.  Probably 1000 pounds.

 

Looking my best in the cab of the Bobcat

 

There I am, very proud, for some reason.

 

Gollum, an avid Jenga player.

 

We visited this waterfall during a February trip to Western Maryland.  Thought I'd throw it in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Healthcare Quiz

(No. 2 pencil is not required)

1.  The healthcare dilemma is well-known.  Everybody uses the healthcare system but not everyone pays for it.  So what to do about the 50 million moochers?  There are four possibilities.  Choose one.

A. Give them some level of care, paid for by the rest of us. (What we do now.)

B. Deny them care.

C. Force people to pay for their own health care. (Obamacare.)

D. Shoot them.

If you selected "A" then you are a good liberal because being liberal is about giving people a free ride. If you selected "B" then you are a good conservative because nobody should get a free ride. If you picked "C" then you are either a bad conservative or a bad liberal or from Japan, Holland or Switzerland (countries which have mandated insurance programs). If you selected "D" then you probably participate in a neighborhood watch program.

2.  Discussion Question (optional).  I've included a photograph showing a nutritious plate of grilled squash, radishes, red bell peppers and yellow curry chicken.  Please discuss it as it relates to Dick Cheney's heart transplant.  

 

Winter Hibernation Done

The grass is growing.  The irises are a foot high.  Blog hibernation over.

With spring arriving I'm itching to spend as much time as I can out on our land in West Virginia.  Cabin-building isn't scheduled until 2013 but we have big plans for this year: garden, greenhouse, garage, more trails, a septic system.  Before I get started on that--and believe me I'll be posting about our progress often--I thought I'd warm up my blogfingers with some observations about sports, pop culture and life-in-general.

Food

I cook with radishes now.  I roast them.  I chop them small and put them in mashed potatoes. I also grow sprouts: broccoli, bean, alfalfa and other.  I've always been mesmerized by the magic of vegetable growing, that you stick a seed in dirt and a month later that dirt is delicious food.  As impressed as I've been with dirt-to-carrots or dirt-to-peppers, the real magic happens with the sprout.  Sprouts don't need dirt.  Hell, they hardly need water.  You just keep them damp and a week later they are big and fat and exploding with flavor. Where does the flavor come from?  It's not the seed.  Eat the seed.  It's bland.  The flavor comes from the water and air.  How friggin' cool is that?  Water and air.  Yum.

Sports

Peyton Manning, 35 years old, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time got dropped by his team, the Indianapolis Colts, a few weeks ago.  So Manning flew coast-to-coast as a half-dozen teams wined and dined him.  Manning ran drills with these teams.  He threw passes with coaches.  He talked offensive strategy, playbooks and salary cap.  He eventually signed with the Denver Broncos.  I wonder how Tim Tebow feels.  I wonder how all the existing quarterbacks felt as they watched their football family woo the great Manning.  Do they feel angry, confused or betrayed?  It must be strange watching your team court a quarterback.  It would be like the Diplomat interviewing a new homemaker, like the Aussie chef Curtis Stone, or maybe the handyman Ty Pennington.  Just the thought makes me want to better my homemaking.  Maybe that's the point. 

Taxes

I don't mind paying taxes.  I believe I get a lot for my money.  Yes, there is disgusting government waste, and I'd like to see smaller government, but as I step into the world and I see roads and police and no swimming signs I think, hey, I'm getting something for my money.   So I'll say it again.  I don't mind paying my taxes.  But I do hate doing my taxes.

It has everything to do with the tax code.  Taxes are so complicated that you either need to pay an expert to do them or trust your tax fate to a computer program.  I've done both. I've used CPAs and they failed me.  They missed deductions.  The problem with the CPA is he's only as good as the info you give him and to give him the right info you need to know something about taxes, and if you know something about taxes you can do it yourself.  I'm sure there are some great CPAs that ask all the right questions but in my experience they didn't.  So, I do my own taxes and save on fees.  Doing taxes yourself is by no means a fix-all. Don't throw your numbers at the program and hope for good results.  You need to think when you do your taxes and you need to check the numbers. I say this because this year I found a heretofore unknown error in TurboTax that increased the tax bill by 200%.  TWO HUNDRED PERCENT.  TurboTax is "working on it".  How did I find this error?  Well, a two-hundred percent increase is not something you miss.  But it makes me wonder about the thousands of other calculations that might be off by 5% or 10%.  Would I notice?  I don't know and it makes me worry.  The lesson here is not about choosing between a CPA or a tax program, the lesson is about revising our tax system so regular people can calculate their taxes with a pen and paper.  It will be an uphill battle: the tax industry is entrenched and the IRS is massive.

Running

While living in Austria the Diplomat and I did half-marathons in ten different countries. It was a fun challenge.  We got exercise.  We saw places we would not have otherwise. Out of nowhere the Diplomat said she wanted to continue the tradition here in the States.  I said, "half-marathon in ten states, no problem."  She said all fifty states.

It will be a lifelong journey but we are already getting started.  We did Florida's Disney half in 2006 so we already have one completed.  On a whim last weekend we dashed up to Pennsylvania for the Chambersburg-half.  Neither of us are adequately trained for a half-marathon.  We've been upping our miles but ten miles is the absolute max I've done in two years.  The Diplomat reported no problem at the finish line but during Chambersburg I suffered.  Major ankle pain.  The last three miles were torture.  I stopped five or six times as I tried to alleviate the pain by groaning.  Then I jogged until it hurt too bad.  Each time I stopped I found myself farther back in the pack in a group of runners that were much slower than me.  Each time I ran I passed them by.  When I stopped, I cheered these people on.  It's what you do at races, you offer encouragement.  I did this over and over.  Cheer.  Run by.  Stop.  Cheer. Run by.  It was strange way to run a race, but the memorable part wasn't the pain or my cheering, it was that no one offered a word of encouragement to me.  I was the one who was hurt.  I was in obvious pain.  And not one person asked if I'm alright.  All I can figure is they kept seeing me run by and cheer and maybe the thought I was mocking them.  It's not an impossible notion.     

 

Happy New Year

I hope everyone had a great holiday and I wish you all the best for 2012.  

We had a wonderful time visiting family in South Carolina in Florida.  The weather was stellar. We were able to go in the pool four straight days down in Florida.

You've probably noticed that there hasn't been an update here in two months.  Well not much has happened with our West Virginia cabin project.  We've made a couple of trips out there to get some firewood and take measurements for a garden we are building, but other than that winter is too damn cold to be on a mountain.

We have big plans for the development of our land this year including a substantial garden, a large fire pit, a septic system, and more roads.  First up is the garden.  We're prepping a 1000 square foot area for spring planting and we're selected a site for a small greenhouse.  Details to come.  Stay tuned! 

Halloween 2011

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.  It's the candy corn. There.  Another great thing is our annual halloween party. We normally have a party theme such as medieval or pirates or superheroes. This year the theme was international vampires.  I came dressed as a vampire Crocodile Dundee and the Diplomat was a vampire sumo wrestler.  Top prize went to Rich and Stacy the viking vampires.  Incidentally I won the party prize for "Most Likely to Puke", an award our dog normally takes home.  (It was foolish for them to vote for me.  Aside from bad food in Montenegro in 2008 I haven't blown chunks since 1993...that's 1 vomit in nearly 20 years.) Here are some pictures from the party:  Halloween 2011.  Don't worry, no puking involved.

There is one part of halloween I don't like so much.  It's manning the front door for the trick-or-treaters.  I don't know what happened during the last twenty years but when I was a kid it worked like this: you wore a COSTUME, you knocked on the door and said TRICK-OR-TREAT, you took only ONE OR TWO pieces of candy and you said THANK YOU as you left.  It's not like that these days.  Kids grabbing double fistfulls, nobody saying thank you.  A half-dozen kids didn't even wear a costume.  I felt mistreated.  To be honest, I'd rather have been scraping lint out of the dryer instead of sitting by the door waiting for a kid with no costume to interrupt my reading of Lea's Chemistry of Cement and Concrete with a virtual halloween candy hold-up. Thankfully I found a solution to the problem. Sometime during the evening I noticed my neighbors were on their front steps handing out candy and being social. It was a mild halloween evening so I decided to join them.  When one of my neighbors brought over a few Torpedo Pale Ales I forgot about the ungrateful trick-or-treaters and enjoyed the night. It's amazing what beer can do.  

I did find a fun list of things to do to trick-or-treaters.  It's something I might try next year.

Mountain Cabin DIY - Episode 8: Stone Walls

I have a long list of excuses to explain my 50 day absence from this blog.  Among my excuses are the Diplomat's birthday, the dog's birthday (Noodle turned 13 so it was a big event), our twelfth wedding anniversary, three cross-country races, a relay duathlon (which we won), soccer games twice per week and I celebrated my 40th birthday which in addition to bringing about a time of self-reflection I also attended a wonderful 3-day National Georgraphic Photo Workshop in DC (courtesy of my parents) and if that was not enough I had the pleasure of entering my fifth decade with my first case of jock itch which I learned should not be treated with the home-remedy known as "vinegar on the junk" not because vinegar does not cure jock itch but because I will never know since just one dose of vinegar down there and I was squealing like a castrated howler monkey. Cold milk didn't even ease the pain. So, without further babble, I'll direct you to some photos from the Nat Geo Photo Workshop or you can skip that and see a couple of snapshots below from a busy two months and also catch up on what we've been doing in WV lately which has mostly been building stone walls.  

The Diplomat's Birthday at the Melting Pot

 

Noodle had a McDonald's burger for her 13th birthday.

 

Here I am finishing the first leg of a cross-country duathlon.  My partner, Ho Nieh, is there to the left.  We won!

 

Wearing my new Detroit Lions jersey at my 40th birhday lunch at Famous Dave's BBQ.

Our first crop yield from our half-ass garden in WV.  Those are sweet potatoes. 
 

In September we started our second stone wall project.  Our first stone wall is not yet done but we decided to make a new garden (after the big fail, above) and it required a terrace and a retaining wall.  The Diplomat is sitting where the upper garden will be.  That's a 16 foot board we used as a form for the concrete base.

 

First we poured the foundation for the wall directly on bedrock.  We had to excavate about 3 feet of dirt to reach bedrock. The Bobcat was essential.

 

We buttered each rock with an inch or two of concrete and stacked them in place.  Some of the rocks weighed about 500 pounds!  Bobcat essential.

 

Nice sunrise view from our camper.

 

Noodle in the camper reflecting on her first 13 years.

 

Noodle gets her dinner warmed up when we are camping.

 

The Diplomat on a cool September evening in WV.

 

The stink bugs really started coming out the last few weeks.  The Diplomat uses the disgusting technique of dropping them in soapy water to kill them.  Her theory is based on the fact that the soapy water prevents them from flying and they drown, saving us from crushing the little stinkers and smelling them.

Mountain Cabin DIY - Episode 7: Summer Break.

Two steps forward, three steps back. That's the story with our West Virginia dream.  We were making real progress.  We had ample water in our camper by way of a 45 gallon transfer tank in the bed of my truck. This meant showers, something we sorely needed. Our new shed provided plenty of storage space: no more toting generators and chainsaws and tools 70 miles from our house. I even built a small deck so we could unwind and take in the view.  Hell, we had ourselves a happenin' little camp.  In fact, we were enjoying it so much we postponed all work for the summer.  Here's how the conversation went.  Me: "Let's put in some roads, a garden, hell, let's build a barn."  She:  "Let's take the summer off."  Me:  "Yeah, okay.  Umduh."  

Truthfully, she made a good call.  Summer was hot.  Hot as in the hottest July on record.  It was time to slow down and enjoy ourselves.  The elevation of our lot is 1700 feet offering some relief from July's nut-drenching heat so why not take it all in.  The cabin can wait.  As we sat on our deck that July afternoon with the sun at our back enjoying our partial view of the valley the Diplomat said, "We only have a partial view of the valley.  Cut down that tree."

That ended our summer break.

It had been a few years since I brought down a plump oak.  Things went smoothly at first, warming up with a slender young pine, a half-dead maple.  Trees were coming down, our view ever expanding.  Then I went face to face with that tree, as in the "Cut down that tree" tree.  It wasn't an especially big oak but the trunk had a nasty crook in it giving it a natural lean in the direction I didn't want it to go.  In theory, an experienced tree-feller can carefully control a tree-fall with a combination of skillful cutting and knowledge of tree-felling.  (FYI that's the first recorded instance of tree-fall being used three times in a sentence.)  Well I've got neither skill or knowledge so the long and short of this story is the tree went where it wanted to and not where it should have and on they way down the damn tree pinched my Stihl Farm Boss between the stump and tree.  When this happens there is no getting the chainsaw out.  What made matters worse was the that tree didn't fall over completely but got hung up on a nearby pine. It was suspended mid-fall at a 45 degree angle. I spent an hour trying recover my chainsaw via the hacksaw-hatchet dual wield method but it was not happening. I spent the evening disassembling my chainsaw so I could get the valuable parts to safety and then I was left to wait it out until Mother Nature brought it down three weeks later, probably as a result of a thunderstorm.  Now I have some rusty chainsaw parts. 

So is life out there. 

You'd think that would be the end of the demolition.

Well, no.  There's something that happens to your brain when you take a perfect, tidy little mountain retreat and chop down a couple of trees.  You no longer see it as a tidy mountain retreat but a work in progress.  It's possible you might start tearing shit up with your Bobcat. It's possible you might have to tap into the resources of your generous neighbor who no-shit-has-an-arc-welder-and-can-fix-anything.  Thanks, John.

Henceforth July is renamed Tear Shit Up Month and August Tear More Shit Up Month.  It's pretty messy out there. We've got stacks of downed trees, an unnecessary but new road, and there are hundreds of boulders scattered all over the place. It looks like the ruins of Gaddafi's compound. You know what that means?  Time for a new project. Out of nowhere we started building a stone wall.  God I friggin' love it out there. 

Root and stump removal 101.

 

Hell, I even put a chain on that tree to try to get it to fall in the right direction but no luck, fell right on our deck.

 

I was doing so poorly with the chainsaw the Diplomat took over.  Her run lasted, well, the course of that hack-job, above.

 

Ya gotta eat.

 

Mixing mortar for our first stone wall.

 

The Diplomat was the mason.  Cutest mason I've seen.  

 

The wall.  Quite fun but hard work.

 

Yes, ya gotta eat.  Cornsgood.

 

Meatsgoodtoo.

 

Mountain Cabin DIY - Episode 6: The Caged Tiger

Our poor little camper was getting overloaded. Not only was the camper our home-away-from-home, but it had also become our garage. We kept everything in there: lawn chairs, power tools, hydraulic fluid and a large stash of pistachios. And every time we showed up on the land for some R & R it was a half-hour of re-org before any fun. 
 
It was time for a storage shed. For two months I studied shed design guides. I considered various floor plans and several roof designs such as gable, gambrel and hip. When the time came to pick our final design I settled for the elegance of the 8 by 12 model sold by the Home Depot. It's not exactly a Home Depot model but a home-version of the overpriced Home Depot model. I call it Shed Model 001 Nonstandard Gable T1-11.   
 
Our collective building experience is this: a tiny 4 by 6 shed behind our townhouse and a 20 by 60 foot roof on a building in South Carolina (another story). Building the Shed Model 001 Nonstandard Gable T1-11 was definitely within our skill-base, however, as things go, we encountered a few hardships that 2 people with 1226 square feet of construction experience should have foreseen. Included in our lessons-learned is 1) bring a ladder, 2) use a level, 3) if you don't bring a latter or use a level then be sure to have a Bobcat, winch and chain.

Here's a photo summary of the project. Cost:$902, Man-hours: 72. Splinters: 12. Blisters 3. Strained-groins: 1 1/2. 

 

First, we had to clear the space. Go, Bobcat, go!

Then we loaded my Dodge Dakota not once, but twice, with 1500 pounds of the finest pre-cut lumber.

 

Wait!  We we need a gravel bed under our shed.  Quick, go get some...

 

The framing of our floor: 2 by 6's, pressure treated.

 

I don't know what you call 'em in home construction but I call them stringers, 2 by 6's spaced 18 inches on center.  We put pressure treated plywood on top for our floor.

 

The walls were standard 2 by 4 studs, 2 feet on center.

 

Another view of the walls. 

 

Next up was the roof.  This is when we realized we didn't have a ladder.  We used the Bobcat bucket like a cherry-picker. Quite fun. 

 

Now you can see our wood siding in place - it's what you call T1-11: plywood with groves to look like siding.  In financial terms: $35/sheet times 8 sheets. Ouch!

 

Here's where it got interesting. About the time we were ready to finish the shed, we realized that the shed twasn't square.  The only way we could get it square was to do what any desperate shed-builder would do: muscle the hell out of it.  We used the Bobcat to shove it straight.  Then we hooked up the chain hoist and tugged it this way and that.  The thing creaked under the stress but we were able to square it up and nail it in place quick enough to get it to hold.  Our friend Pete (who was visiting from Austria) nicknamed the shed the Caged Tiger.  The shed has so much potential energy that we're scared that if one nail pops the entire thing will go critical and create a black hole. 

 

Now for some paint. A bit of oil-based primer and then some water-based primer.  Not sure if they mix well but that's what happens when you grab the wrong stuff.

 

The roof was an experiment.  We splurged and put a metal roof on.  Great idea except for the 196 screws.  All installed from that position.  Anyone know a chiropractor?

 

 

Yeah, metal roof is sweet.  Pretty as a purple pony.

And there you have it. The Caged Tiger.  902 bucks and well worth it.  

 

MOUNTAIN CABIN DIY – EPISODE 5: Pimp my Bobcat and a New Gate

What is all the stuff in my truck?  A lot of fun, that's what.  

Enough with the mud!  Stuck twice.  Almost ten hours digging and pulling and pushing.  No fun.  I'm not blaming the Bobcat for our woes: the tires are worn, the conditions have been unusually wet, and our operator lacks some basic skills.  But if we are going to turn this untamed wilderness into a happy retreat, we need a Bobcat upgrade.    The Bobcat dealer told me the best bang-for-your-buck upgrade I could do was to add over-the-tire steel tracks onto my rubber tires.  Like tank tracks.  Yes, they exist.  Not only would it give me added "float" in muddy conditions, but tracks are purported to provide better traction when pushing  and loading and overall improved performance because the increase weight.  The dealer had me at tank.

Sold!

Uh, wait a sec.  Did you just say 3g for steel tracks?  Er.  Um.  No can do, Bucko.  Even if the Diplomat approved it, the cash flow just ain't gonna cut it.  My answer: Craigslist.

I'm a craigslist junkie.  I bought the Bobcat on craigslist.  I bought a reliable washer and dryer.  I have rented four properties, sold two cars, a camper, a generator and a chainsaw on craigslist.  Next up: steel tracks.

After a few weeks of searching I landed a sweet set of tracks off a contractor in Virginia.  Wilbur had the tracks sitting in his storage yard for 6 months.  I negotiated for a great price, got a good one and had the guy load them in the back of the Dakota.  According to the Youtube video tutorial I watched it takes 4 hours to put on steel tracks.  In three hours the Dip and I pimped the Bobcat into a veritable Abrams tank.  Arr!

The other big news is the installation of a driveway gate.  This was the Diplomat's project.  Her design: 12 foot aluminum gate supported by 6 x 6 timbers sunk in concrete.  This was a rewarding project.  It only took a couple of hours and looks great.  We dug the holes with Bobcat, of course, and had to contend with some big rocks and groundwater, but after trying a few different spots we had two 30-inch holes.  We filled the bottom of the holes with a few inches of gravel and then set the posts in place, filling around them with concrete.  Each post took about three, sixty pound bags of concrete.  After carefully leveling the posts and allowing the concrete to cure for a week, we attached the gate.  We're very proud!

Measuring the hole.

The first post in place.

The Diplomat leveling the post.

Our gate!