Not far from the house is the spot where the old dog kennel used to be. (The Doc’s family raised Dobermans there–see Historic Visitors.) We tore the rickety old kennel down way back in 2015 (see Dog House Down). The spot is near the house but still away from the house; technically it’s part of the west pasture. Regular readers may remember that the kennel’s original concrete pad cracked under the weight of all the blocks we staged there when rebuilding the great wall (see The Wall Saga: Block Unloading), so when we redid the driveway and courtyard asphalt, I had the crew put in a new pad (see Our New Pad!). The thinking was we would eventually put a huge diesel generator down there…only we ended up going with a battery backup system instead (see Battery Backup: The Install).
Fast forward to April 2026. Thanks to all the work around the pool, I had so much rubble from the old pool deck, plus lots of 4×4 slabs that had been pulled out intact (see Around the Pool, Part 2: Demo). It made sense to try to repurpose things. So: vegetable planters!
The same crew as always–“Rafa and his brothers”–built them. (Side note: when the guys work directly for me, they get yummy lattes in the mornings and then, if they want, a bottle of Modelo at the end of the day.) The bottoms were made with two of the 4×4 slabs each, to keep the pocket gophers out. The guys used some of the remaining base rock to get them level, and then put a small bit of concrete into the space between the two to stitch them together. Then they started forming up the walls using the concrete rubble: since one side of each bit of rubble was already flat, they kept those sides facing out. Then they tied all the pieces together with yet more concrete.
Why the concrete bottoms? Pocket gophers. If you’ve never met one, they’re burrowing rodents (family Geomyidae) named for the fur-lined cheek pouches they use to carry food, and they spend nearly their whole lives underground in tunnel systems, munching on roots and tubers–sometimes pulling an entire plant down into the ground from below. (More over at Wikipedia.) We have Botta’s pocket gophers here (see Wild Life Part 7: Seldom Seen Gophers), and an open-bottomed planter would basically be a buffet for them.
This project actually happened before the mini-wall, and it was the start of my many runs down to Payless Hardware, Rockery, and Nursery to buy a few dozen 80lb bags of ready-mix concrete–sometimes two runs in a single day. Payless is an Ace store, and fun fact: Ace stores are independently owned. Ace Hardware is a retailers’ cooperative–the local stores pool their buying power to purchase in bulk and share marketing costs, and since the 1970s the retailers themselves have owned the company (see Ace Hardware). Which is a big part of why I like Ace: there’s no board of shareholders trying to maximize profit, and no crazy owners using those profits to try to fund regressive laws. Many of the employees have worked there for years, so when you walk in they actually know where stuff is located without relying on the same app you could just use yourself. And if you visit often enough (nudge nudge, wink wink), the same staff remember you and any projects you may have mentioned you’re working on. Ok…stepping down on my buy responsibly soapbox.
Back to the veg boxes — which once they were close to done, the boxes looked like little sarcophagi.
Next I had Payless deliver a load of planting mix, and the guys used our skid steer to shuffle it around to the boxes and dump it in. They also drilled some drainage holes around the bottom so we don’t end up with little swamps.
Then there was the matter of keeping the deer away. We ventured into the barn and pulled some of my spare fencing left over from the big refencing of our eastern side to keep the neighbors’ skanky horses at bay (see Re-Fencing). I had plenty of posts as well, but I did not have a gate, and I knew I wanted one so that we could get machinery into the space if need be. A quick run down to the nearest Tractor Supply, and I finally spent the gift certificate my parents gave us for Christmas on a nice gate that does the trick.
The project was pretty straightforward. Once the dirt was in place, I made a call….