Didn’t put a lot of hours on the L today but had a variety of short jobs. First up, this rotten at the bottom maple tree fell
with the top across this trail in the creek bottom.
The simplest, least disruptive resolution we could come up with, shove it off the stump with the grapple and skid the whole thing in one piece back into the woods. Tractor didn’t fit in the woods but a snatch block chained to a tree and a bit of simple rigging fixed the direction of pull issue.
So job one complete. (Note revised position of stump v tree.)
Trail at bottom of hill now clear after one pass with the grapple to clean up the scraps.
Next, redirected a nearby ditch that’s fed by a small spring and has recently decided to change course to an inconvenient path that turns one of my Dad’s preferred hunting spots into a nearly impassable mud hole. Forgot to take an after pic and the before was just a pathetic representation so sorry, no pics. Tilted the box scrape off to one side and redirected it to its original course. As an aside, slated to have hydraulic top and side link and associated valves installed this week. I was starting to feel a bit guilty about spending the money on rear hydraulics… until I did this piddling little project which would have taken maybe 20 minutes with hydraulic 3 point but took more like 50 minutes because as simple as it was, it required numerous setup changes. Had been putting it off pending hydraulic 3 point but I was there, the tractor was there, the ditch was there, and I had 50 minutes to do a 20 minute job. Now I don’t feel quite as guilty.
Then back up the steep hill home (as usual, however steep it looks in photos or video, multiply by 1.5 to 2 for reality.)
Fun with the pole saw today back on the pseudo-civilized part of the property. Pruned around our house, Dad’s house, and along the private road. Wife made about a dozen neat little piles as I cut and we discussed and decided what needed pruning. We’ve done that enough now it’s pretty efficient and she’s good at making the piles with everything oriented for easy grappling.
Almost feels like I’m cheating at something riding around picking up brush without even getting off the machine. Wife has gotten pretty good at this, too but she had been working as well and was ready for a break. Piling it up to chip later when the pile is built up again.
Final job for the day was a bit unique, at least for us. Found this old drop in oven out in the woods a while back. Half full of dirt, very rusty, embraced by a tangle of roots. Not sure how we would have dug it out without some sort of equipment. Grapple had no problem wrestling the old oven from the grip of the earth. We’ll be taking it to a real dump rather than “the hole down in the holler” which was at one time the dump for most rural people in this area when I was a kid.