Up on Gaylord Mountain Road the ground is more ledge than loam, and A. L. Talmadge Services LLC has learned to read it — where the traprock shelf runs shallow, where March meltwater wants to travel, where a leach field can breathe. This is groundwork at its most literal: site preparation and land clearing, foundation digs, trenching for utilities, driveway and roadway bases, grading and resloping until water leaves a yard the way it should instead of the way it has been. They design, install, replace, repair and inspect septic systems, set French drains and catch basins, and lay out stormwater systems for houses and commercial sites across New Haven County. Demolition belongs to them too — residential, commercial, interior and structural, concrete and asphalt removal, then cleanup, so a lot reads as ready rather than wrecked. From Hamden the trucks run out to North Haven, Cheshire, Branford, Guilford, Wallingford and down toward the shoreline, and they clear snow when Connecticut hands them a winter.