Before our day's work began. The footprint still looks round. The middle "island" is almost gone!

This is a close-up on the southeast corner of the foundation footprint. We have dug about 1 foot into the ground, and another shovel-full will dig out the clay underneath. So we're concentrating on digging out the top soil in the other area. When that's all done, then we'll start digging into the clay layer.

Digging the foundation. Again, the ground is very hard so often we have to break up the soil with mattock and then scrape the broken-up bits later. But the ground was so hard in some places, it bent our little mattock!

Our friends Justin and Yu working on the north side. Notice how deep he is into the ground. The land slopes from north to south, and on the north side we had to dig deeper to reach the clay soil.

Justin taking a little break, and Hana supervising the rest of us. It's really hard work! But it's also fun to do it with friends.

Bryce, Kai and Hana. Again notice how the soil is broken up at Bryce's feet. The mattock is very essential to clay-heavy soil like ours. It's hard to dig, but it'll make great cob later!

This is at the end of the morning. Thanks to our friends, we were able to finish the semi-rectangular footprint of the house. The little island left in the middle is actually a fireant's nest. They are very small reddish ants that give nasty bites. We had to give them a bait to kill them before we dig into their nest.

This is the view from the other side, the west end. Terri is putting bait into the fireant's nest. We will not take any more top soil off from the middle -- at this point we'll continue by digging deeper into the foundation trench.