All right everyone, welcome back to Cody's Lab
As you can see I'm up at the mine, and I'm joined by my pack of tamed wolves, which are...
Right behind me... coming up right here... come on puppies!
Alright, so...
Didn't I kick that thing over last time?
Huh, interesting.
Anyway, uh...
We're going to check things out. I haven't been up here since, uh,
the beginning of April, so let's see what's going on and let's do a little bit of digging.
Looks like a little bit of, uh, dirt has falling down in front of the entrance.
And, something killed a bird in there
Huh.
Other than that, everything looks fine.
Uh, I will mention the, uh...
April Fool's video that I did, which I'm not super proud of but, uh...
When I did that, I actually was sitting right here.
And the camera was right there, so you just couldn't see me.
And I was outside the mine, and the blast went off.
I was sitting over here, playing on my phone.
And...
I wanted to wait long enough for the smoke to start, come billowing out,
before I stopped the camera.
And, uh...
Unfortunately, the camera actually died, before that smoke actually started coming out real well.
And so I was...
And so I just took that video file and uploaded it
I probably should have like...
Redone it, but, oh well.
Anyway, it's going to be interesting to go in and see what that last blast did.
I just had one, charge go off.
And see how much dirt moved, but first, let's, uh, dig this away.
Okay, we're in.
So, let's head back there and see what that last blast did.
There's a pile of rubble.
That's more than I thought would be knocked down.
Yeah, a whole section over there is missing.
Excellent.
The back wall is actually relatively flat now.
It appears... all that came down with it.
Yeah... that exploded out, and then this fell down after.
Can't even see my muck sheet in there.
That's good.
We know that it's buried and there's lots of material on top of it, and it'll be easy to remove.
Not so much over here, but...
It'll help.
That's good.
I think I might bar some of this material down.
You know make sure there's nothing else loose, about to fall before I start really digging, but there you go
But... there you go.
Now, it looks like the watering can wasn't in here.
I definitely need to get everything wet before I start shoveling
The dust contains a small amount of lead, and I don't want to be breathing too much of that in.
Yeah, there's no watering can in here. So I'm going to have to go back down and get it.
That's all right.
I needed to get some other stuff anyway.
Let's go look and see if any of that alfalfa grew.
So I threw a bunch of the seeds out right in this area, and sure enough
There's Alfalfa sprouts, see there?
It's actually growing.
That's good.
This stuff sends down deep root systems, and once it gets established...
It's great for erosion control, and the animals love to eat it.
Hopefully, it doesn't absorb too much lead.
It really shouldn't.
Did it grow anywhere else?
Oh yeah, there's little patches of it all around here.
Nothing really very big, but it's only been growing for a little while.
Only recently got warm enough to start growing
Lets see, there's a lot of sunflowers in here, those probably came in from birds and stuff.
Yeah, there's more growing here on the side.
That's just where I wanted it.
Excellent.
So, a lot of people were asking me about the seeds, because they were red, and they were coated in something
Uh, some people were worried that it was a pesticide or something.
I looked it up, turns out it was just lime mixed with sawdust...
and a little bit of glue, and some pink dye.
So that's all that was coating the seeds.
And the lime of course makes them bitter, and the animals not want to eat it.
And the sawdust and stuff, holds in a little bit of moisture and protects the seed.
It obviously worked; this is a desert here,
and... I'm actually surprised any of it grew.
But... yeah.
Perhaps I'll also throw in some, uh, of the native range grasses.
You know, find some seeds of this here, and throw it around.
That's all just, uh... kind of a... reclamation process which is undergoing.
'Cause, you know I don't plan to be mining this forever.
In fact, since I've decided there's not really much in the way of gold here...
I'm probably, not gonna do much in the way of actual mining.
I might, uh, wind up turning this into a fallout shelter.
I think that's the ultimate goal for this summer.
I'm not going to reclaim it to a hundred percent.
What it was naturally, it doesn't really need to.
It just needs to... go to the point where it doesn't look like an obvious mine.
I want to still be able to use it as a fallout shelter, you know.
So, you can see I've been dumping the dirt,
The silty, clay material that can still grow plants, I've been dumping that kind of off to the side here.
And then dumping the rocks in here.
And eventually, I'm going to cover the rocks with the silty clay material, so this all can grow in with plants.
And that's actually going to be better than what it was when I got here.
So, yeah.
That's the plan
I'm going to take this, uh, water jug off,
and go find that watering can and come back up.
Okay
So as you can see, I've got the water can.
The dog stole the little shower thing, and I couldn't find it so I had to improvise; you see I've got this thing here.
Just a bottle that I poked some holes in the bottom of.
We can use this to... clean off this piece of plastic here.
Excellent.
Seems to work.
I've also got an actual pickaxe right here.
Perhaps we use it today.
I think this pickaxe is actually, uh...
Almost 100 years old; I think it was made in the 1920s
Hopefully, I don't break it. It's durability bar is pretty low
[Insert Minecraft joke here]
Yeah, I'm just putting this plastic over the light so, that the light is more diffuse, rather than a spotlight
It's much easier on the camera.
All right, here we are the back of the mine again.
Now what I'm going to do
Is swing this, uh, pickaxe here, and kind of give everything a little tap.
Just to make sure there's nothing still very loose, and is gonna fall on me while I'm working over here.
[tap, tap]
[Rocks falling]
There's still a little bit that's loose
[tap, tap]
It doesn't appear to be too bad though... definitely going to stand off to the side while I'm doing this.
[tap, tap]
That whole thing right there could come down.
[tap, tap]
[More rocks falling]
There is a bit of rock there.
[Even more rocks falling]
[pickaxe scraping]
you know I wonder how much of this I could dig out just with this pickaxe.
All right.
That's as good as it's going to get.
Tapping at these rocks.
[Rocks falling]
Alright looks like everything that's in imminent danger of falling down.
Now let's get shoveling.
I'm going to set the time lapse up again.
See you in a bit.
I want to show you the difference between using the muck sheet,
and... not having the sheet of tin in there.
So... lets dig at the gravel, see I push at it.
It's... very difficult to get a shovel full.
But, over here... look at how much easier that is
So, once again, over here... I have to really push on it get to...
Go in through the gravel, I have to... jimmy it around a little bit...
Scoop, like so.
But, using the muck sheet here...
Slide right across the tin, and get a shovel full of gravel.
Look how nice that is.
Without it:
I mean, I probably make it look easy both times, but...
This is so much better to be able to slide the shovel against something.
See what it is, is instead of having the shovel hit the rocks... like this:
And then... having to push them out of the way
It's hitting the rocks...
like this, because the rock is sitting on the tin, so it just nicks the very edge.
And the rock just pops right up on the shovel.
I'm never not going to use one of these again.
[shovel scraping]
Look at that, we already filled the wheelbarrow.
And, uh... I also noticed that the, uh...
Shorter shovel does help, because I can hold it like this in the mine and doesn't hit the sides.
Does mean I have to, like, lean down more
But... at least I'm not losing material when I'm turning around
All right, I'm going to take this out.
Let's, uh, dim that light so it lasts longer, and set the high s-... set the time-lapse back up.
There we go. I've mucked it out once again
In fact, I think that's one of the most amount I've moved out of here at one time... so... there you go.
I don't know if you notice, but in the, uh, time-lapse
I tried, like, picking at the ground here a little bit, 'cause I want to make this level at some point.
But, uh, unfortunately, it's a little too hard to pick through with the pickaxe, so...
I'm going to have to use explosives on the floor, but I'm sure you guys won't complain.
I'm thinking, uh, maybe that little tiny drill.
Just drill a bunch of holes, load them up with gunpowder. Just blast it out a little at a time.
And then... maybe I could polish it up with a pickaxe, but that's probably the best way to make it level.
I wanted to, uh...
I also wanted to go through and, uh, pick some more of this material down and, you know, get a lot of stuff moved today, but I'm pooped
Uh...
You know I haven't done this in a couple of months and, so I'm really sore right now
So I think I'd better... come at it, sort of slowly
Hopefully, I'll be able to come out here either next week or a week after that.
And I think at that point I want to take the pickaxe and move as much material with that as I possibly can.
I think that'll be a nice little challenge for me
See how much of this rock I can move just by picking at it rather than using explosives, but speaking of explosives...
I am sitting right here, where the original end of the tunnel was, back when I first started digging this - this was...
The wall... this whole amount of material right here... is what we've moved.
It's not a lot, but... you know, that's...
several tons of rock, so...
There you go.
And also, there's been a lot of material moved from up there.
Let's, uh, pick the camera up and show you guys
And see... I can... just barely reach the ceiling,
this has got to be at least eight feet tall right here, in fact I could jump...
without too much fear of hitting the roof.
So this orange rock here... seems to go in that direction
It might be worthwhile to follow that, in fact.
There's some orange rock up on top of the hill, which I think this might be connected to.
It might be interesting, to, uh, you know if I wanted to pursue the mining further.
That'd probably the thing to chase, because I know there's small amounts of gold and silver in this and there's certainly a bit of lead.
If I could follow this and get to a stronger area, it might be worth mining, but... for now
it doesn't look like it's gonna' really pan out, so I'm gonna'...
for now focus on just making a nice... big room in here.
Anyway, I think that's all I've got for this little while.
If I want to stay... in decent shape... I don't want to dig too much more.
So yeah, I think that's it for today's work.
I'll definitely come back here soon.
You know I say fallout shelter, but I kind of also mean like a mars-type-based-thing.
You know, I still want to do the mars simulation thing here.
You know, spend a couple of weeks inside the mine pretending like it's a cave on mars, you know...
Like maybe even I'll make a pressure suit
Look how big this alfalfa stalk has gotten.
Looks like the cows have already eaten some of it.
It's probably because it's down here, where the water runs.
It's getting plenty of water.
One more thing about the alfalfa is, since it's a legume.
It actually fixes nitrogen to the soil, and actually helps other plants grow
That's, uh, one of the reasons why I selected this particular... crop.
Anyway, hope y'all enjoyed. I'll see you next time.