Woods road/working with a tractor in the woods

So after our timber harvest last year I hired a mulching contractor to mulch some of the harvester trails in the hopes of gaining some access to the woods. I've been working on the mulched trails and working in the woods with the tractor.


Most of my property is relatively flat which means plenty of wet spots and we've had the wettest July on record so I've been cutting cedar and lining the wet spots. The cedar doesn't have much value timber wise because it doesn't get very big, is never straight and usually hollow and I've got tons of it.







I was recently given a small trailer, so I decided to add a receiver to my ballast box to be able to take the trailer out in woods to haul back rounds or small logs. First I had to remove the ballast so I could drill some holes and mount the receiver.


Bolt on 2 inch receiver.

Shin saver/canoe roof pad.

Here's my ballast box set-up. Chains in the ammo cans and all the chainsaw stuff in the milk crate that hangs off the back of the ballast box.

Tractor set up. Definitely would like to upgrade to a bigger tractor but that's just not in the cards right now.



I'm thinking about getting a small winch and mounting it to a receiver mount, I've got no experience with winches so am not sure if that is a good idea or not, I'd like to use it to be able to unstick the tractor and maybe winch some small logs. The pallet fork frame has a 2 inch receiver as well but I think winching from the loader might be a bad idea?


It would be cool to see some other members set ups to see how you get things done as I've got little to no experience.

Here's a little ride along from the back door of my house. Sorry the vid is in portrait.

 

DaveGunter Going 'old school' for the road. Haven't seen a new corduroy road ever. Great idea and it looks like it will work well for you.

 

You certainly have opened up your property. I remember some very early shots and there was a lot of debris and underbrush in your woods.

Can you top the corduroy sections with mulch to fill in the gaps? Might make it smoother to ride on.

 

OMG! A post about your property and no hounda??

You'd get a smoother ride over the cedar logs if you nailed a few boards perpendicular to the logs, wide enough for the wheels to fit on.

Nice looking back 40!

 

The Hounds are usually inside when I'm out working with equipment, I kinda got to keep an eye/ear on them.

I was thinking the same thing about the boards or like Woodwidow said maybe fill in the gaps with some mulch.

 

One problem I ran into with a small winch on a CUT was a very short run time to where the motor needed to cool off aside from the weight pulling limits on the small winch. I bought a slightly bigger winch last minute on sale a TSC but I came home and compared numbers on the box and I really hadn't gained much even though the HP numbers on the winch looked impressive.
I ended up getting a gas motor capstan winch . Which still has its own limitations but at least the motor runs until it is out of gas.

 

Your corduroy sections look great DaveGunter ... and your wood equipment is perfect, imho. Every time you work, you'll discover a new idea, or 2, to maximize the tractor's capability. Thanks for the pics...

 

Hi DaveGunter ,

I had a good stretch of trail that needed to be built up, I used leaves, bark, splitter trash and pine needles. I also scored three or four free loads of chips from a company doing tree work for the National Grid who owns the powerlines, some of the chips went to the low area that needed to be built up but most went on a trail past the first gate that the rains would wash away.

I put the leaves down first, bark second, splitter trash third and the pine needles are usually last unless we have chips. I haven't had to redo it again this year but I'm only running the four wheelers over it.

 

Looks great DaveGunter !
(Edit: I suspect these are a dime a dozen in your area, but rare around me. Anyway, you have a private Golden Road!)

 

so back in early summer I bought a Woodland Mills 3pt hydraulic feed PTO driven chipper and it finally came a couple weeks ago. I tried to make a video of me using it but the vids don’t come out very good. Here it is.

WC46 4″ PTO Wood Chipper, Wood Chipper | Woodland Mills USA



I’m pretty pleased with it, biggest problem is my tractor doesn’t have much ground clearance so if you get into some uneven/steep terrain the chipper will drag on the ground which is not good for either the chipper or the tractor. Just another reason to get a bigger tractor.

Anyway I’ve been doing a bunch of chipping learning the machine and have been using the chips to even out the corduroy roads.

 

DaveGunter , the roads look great! At the risk of sounding arrogant, & I really don't mean too, you do need a larger tractor I think. As to the winch, I have several & you really can't go too big. I would not hook a winch to the ballast box, you'll likely pull the bolts right through. Skidding with an electric winch is an exercise in futility, not near enough duty cycle. Hydraulic or PTO is the only way to go. Not a cheap option, but it's the buy once, cry once principle. Once you own one you'll wonder how you ever did without it.

 

FIFY!!

 

Lookin' great Dave!

 

That cedar road looks great! I second what thewoodlands said about using chips. I have a lot of swampy areas on my property and have used wood chips (compliments of Asplundh) successfully to gain access to territory where previously you could barely walk, never mind drive a tractor. As for the winch, if you plan on skidding a lot of logs I agree with amateur cutter that an electric winch would not be practical. I have used a vehicle-mounted electric winch for years to skid logs, however I only do it sparingly (scrounging), not for heavy-duty use clearing acreage. I have two capstan winches and they have their uses, but are much more of a PITA to employ. If you are looking for a winch to use once in a while or for emergency use if you get the tractor stuck, I would recommend something like Warn's Multi-Mount winch. I have the one shown below for my current truck and it is great because I can use it on anything that has a Class III receiver (which includes my tractor). You can get the wiring harness from Warn as well to install a quick disconnect on the tractor. They aren't cheap, but I've been using Warn winches for around 35 years and never had one fail so they are a good investment (plus you can use it on any vehicle with a Class III receiver and it is not a dedicated winch for just one vehicle).

 

Thanks for the input, much appreciated.

Yeah, bigger tractor is definitely needed if I want to do any serious work in the woods. The electric winch idea was more intended for emergency get me unstuck situations than trying to do much work. I did add a 8”x8” piece of 1/4 inch plate on the inside of the ballast box and bolted through that as well.

 

Thanks!

That is exactly what I was looking at something that can be moved from machine to machine easily.

 

Pretty hard to get it stuck with bucket on it.. my bucket will push tractor back.. in mud over axels

 

Once you own one DOZEN you'll wonder how you ever did without THEM

Hey smart azz, I've only got four or is it five, can't quite remember & it's raining so I'm not gonna go count.

True right up until the slop in front of the bucket doesn't have enough "hold" for the bucket to bite on. Just ask Dennis & Brett. Winch will save ya a lot of misery when in sticky situations. That warn winch that EODMSgt posted is an excellent set up for recovery type operations, skidding logs as he said, use sparingly.

 

I have been busy doing lots of work in the woods developing the trails harvesting firewood along the way. Some pics from the work. I was also lucky enough to get a couple of huge loads of chips from chipdrop














The baby Deere has performed well but I’ve been consistently finding myself getting in a little over its head, and not being able to accomplish want I want so I decided to send it down the road and took a big gulp of the orange Kool-aid today.





L3902 loaded Ag tires with ice chains, third function, telescoping 3pt stabilizers, block heater, grill guard, bucket hook, rear work light
Snow plow
Grapple
Fransguard winch
Land plane
Back blade
Backhoe is backordered, should be here in the spring along with a Salsco 627XT chipper.
Really looking forward to the chipper, dual infeed hydraulic feed rollers.
salsco 627xt - Google Search

I kind of wanted a cab but they’re not available on an L. You can get the LX with a cab but the LX platform is smaller and mounting a backhoe on a cab introduces other issues that make the tractor even less capable in the woods and the main point of upgrading the tractor was to be able to do more work in the woods.