I learned about corduroy roads when we researched Karl’s family tree and found out his great-great-grandfather, Lorenzo Dow Hill (Co. I, 25th Ohio Volunteer Infantry), was injured in the Civil War. His second injury was when a Minié ball struck him on the first day of fighting at Gettysburg. He survived the war but claimed an invalid pension based on his first, somewhat less heroic, injury. I forget where he was, but the details of the injury remain clear in my memory; he was building a corduroy road and somehow slipped, landing astride a log and, to make a long story short, he was never quite the same again.

Our own version of a corduroy road is unlikely to injure anyone, but LD was our inspiration and our purpose is the same; a temporary roadbed through mud or swampy conditions made by laying logs across the path.

We are now able to drive the tractor over the low, muddy areas of the field so that we can work the interior. We do a lot of work by hand, but the tractor makes light work of hilling up the potatoes and we would like to get that done before it rains again. We won’t be able to hill up the potatoes next to the logs but we have enough mulch straw to cover those.