Dry stone wall: chapter 2

A few weeks ago my weekly post was about the first step in creating a dry stone wall, explaining how we prepared the foundation.
This week we have continued with the next step which is building the inner side of the wall of concrete H-blocks (50 x 25 x 20 cm, about 20 kg each!). This goes relatively fast if you have a bit of experience and we do ! Ans was preparing the mortar / mortero (Spanish) / pasta (our own term for it) in a smaller 90 liter mixer. Ondrej, our new volunteer from the Czech Republic put the stones near the place where they were processed and I glued them in using a trowel and a level. The first 2 rows of 30 blocks the first day and the 3rd and 4th the next day. So the backside of the wall is 4 blocks high = 80 cm.
Today I created some forms of wood panels at the beginning and end of the wall and near the end left a gap open to have access to this part of the garden.
After lunch we started to mix concrete in the big mixer on the Manitou (300 liter per load) , poured the concrete in a big trough and lifted it up with our crane and filled the hollow H-block with it. Everything went very smooth for a few hours when the Manitou suddenly did not want to drive anymore. Ondrej spotted hydraulic oil leaking out of the engine room and we were forced to stop the machine and call it a day. It proved that somewhere near the hydraulic pump an O-ring was pressed out, caused by a lose bolt. Ondrej is trying to fix it as I am writing this blog. Tomorrow the shop where I can buy hydraulic hoses and parts and stuff is open, so hopefully we can remove the O-ring today.

There is not much else to tell unfortunately. I am going to contact the dry stone mason today, so he can schedule making the nice side of the wall. One way or another we will get the remaining part of the wall filled with concrete.

One PS: Ondrej proves to be a super helpful and nice guy. He is here now exactly one week and has done already a ton of work, checked all machines, has done regular maintenance ; he is strong, young, a willing worker, not with his mind somewhere else, pro-active and not a nagger. This evening we are going to talk to him and try to convince him that he should stay a bit longer than the few weeks he is intending to help us here.