Gratz Industries HQ: The Backbreaking Labor Begins

We really want to get started on the siding of our house, but first there's a low spot in our yard that quickly becomes a large lake when we have a lot of rain. Before the ground freezes we'd like to take care of that problem, so we've started digging a trench to install one of those landscaping drainage pipes. The trench needs to be about 70 feet long - that's a lot of digging. It's really the kind of thing to hire a backhoe or rent some kind of trenchdigger for, but we don't have enough money for that right now. We do, however, have enough money to buy a mattock.And Alan has a willingness to wield it.So here's the trench when we started yesterday - before that Alan was digging it out with just a spade. Aaack! And ow!Now we have a new system that works pretty well. Alan hacks everything up with the mattock (including breaking up very large chunks of quartz with the pickaxe end of the thing) and then I come along behind him with the spade and shovel out the loose stuff. We dug about 14 feet yesterday and we think we have three more afternoons of work on this. Then we get to order a truckload of gravel. Yay!
We had thought to get some digging done this afternoon but it's raining. No backbreaking labor for us today!