The previous owners of our home were into playing horseshoes. No, you don’t understand. They were really into playing horseshoes. We had these two large horseshoe pits taking up space in our backyard. We have extra horsehoes in the basement (and why didn’t they take it with them?)
I tried removing them, but the original owner built them tornado-ready. I tried digging out the first one, but after an hour of digging, found four 2×4 boeams above ground, and four more 2×4 beams buried underground. And the simple stick in the ground (as seen above) is actually about three feet of construction rebar staked through another 2×4 beam, a layer of sand, and then additional layers of soil and rocks. After an hour or so, this was as far as I got:
I eventually got tired and gave up. I ran out of time last month, and never went back to remove the rebar, or to work on the 2nd horseshoe pit. My wife got a great idea to hire a local handyman to do the heavy lifting. Great idea. I found a guy willing to do it, and he did a nice job in record time to remove the pits, refill with top soil, and even seed them.
Eureka! Job done. Eventually, the grass will grow back, and we can use this side of the yard again.