A bucket bites, swings, sets its load down clean — and somewhere under that steady diesel rhythm, a hand reads the grade by eye before the laser ever confirms it. Stockwood Excavation works out of Amesbury, where the Powow drops toward the Merrimack and the old mill streets climb into hills that turn stubborn and ledgy the moment you dig. Their days run to clearing and stump grinding, regrading and loam and grass, trenching, drainage and ditching, foundations, basement excavation, utility install, retaining walls, road construction, erosion control, demolition and material removal — and when the coastal wind swings northeast, snow removal and plowing across lots and drives. There is real satisfaction in it: a slope that finally sheds its water, a pad squared to the string line, a raw yard combed smooth and seeded, a parking lot scraped down to black before the first car arrives. Commercial and residential work across Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island — ground shaped to hold whatever gets built on it.