Woods road/working with a tractor in the woods

Great ride and property, thanks for sharing! I am thinking go pro mount!

 

Self releasing snatch block You can see the little tab at the top of the wheel get tripped when the first choker hits it and then the cable releases from the block.

Was surprisingly hard to find and was a long wait, took like 4 months to get here and expensive at $300

 

The backhoe and chipper came in. The dealer picked up the tractor last week, set up the chipper, installed the backhoe and did the 50 hour service while they had it, returned the other day.




I had not seen the chipper in person, just photos and videos, this thing is a monster, can’t wait to get it out in the woods. I’ve been pulling tons of dead down and harvest debris to the road with the winch for chipping.





Had a chance to try out the backhoe today, first time I’ve ever run anything like that, huge respect for the guys who can operate and make it look easy. The woods road leaving the house is flanked by a slope with lots of exposed rock, the water weeps out of the hillside year round so it stays wet most of the time, and is a mud hole this time of year. I dug a trench on the high side following the natural slope and then cut across the road at a flatter spot. Going to see how this drains for a week or so, hopefully it will help the road dry out. Will need to get a culvert for the road crossing but I think I might just leave the trench open…maybe turn it into a French drain at some point. Also dug some stumps.

 

What a great setup! Thanks for sharing the pics.

 

Continuing to work on the woods road. I was lucky enough to score some loads of wood chips from Chipdrop, ended up getting 6 loads in total, about 20 cubic yards of chips per drop, I was running out of space where I have them drop, so I took a couple of days off from work and did nothing but run trailer loads of chips out in the woods a spread them on the road.




I was gifted this litter 4x6 trailer, it's not really meant for woods work, but it has held up well to the abuse. I added some higher sides.







I converted it to a pintle hitch because it kept popping off the ball, I've got a receiver on the pallet fork frames so I end up pulling it backwards out into the woods. Makes it super easy to dump the load instead of having to rake the chips back out of the trailer.




Added some removable panels in the back.





Added a brush guard to the factory grill guard, helps from poking stray sticks into the hood when using the grapple.


Resident turtles have shown up down at the creek, i've counted a couple dozen or so at one time.


Had a little beaver action one day too. There were beavers here when we first got the place, but they moved on a couple years ago and the dam washed out, I was kinda glad, I'm hoping this guy doesn't decide to stay.

 

Great progress! Awesome getting all those chips. I just had a turtle in the yard this past weekend. Having a big dog, I moved it to the edge of our property.

 

So cool to see the progress! Nice score on those chips; they came in handy for sure.

 

Springtime buggy ride

 

I’ve been continuing to lay corduroy road in the wet spots using cedar logs ripped in half, also have been digging with the backhoe filling in holes and leveling out side hills. I think I’m done digging for now, so I took the backhoe off, put the three point hitch back on and hooked up the new chipper. First time using it,pretty impressed so far, this thing with dual infeed rollers will suck in just about anything. No more struggling with Ys, crotch pieces, or curvy stuff. Sucks down a 6 inch log with ease. It is very heavy, steering gets light, so I grabbed a boulder with the grapple to get some weight on the front end, still helps a ton having independent rear brakes. I built some sides for the buggy, with a removable rear board so I can chip directly into it, then transport the chips to wherever I need them.

 

Very cool setup!

 

Chip-n-dump seems to work well there.

 

It is working very well. I use the grapple to gather the brush to be chipped so it’s not all spread out. Small brush takes about 15-20 of chipping to fill the buggy…take a water break and drive the buggy to the drop site, spread the chips and repeat. The buggy holds about 1.5 cubic yards with the sides I built for it. I did learn today that I need to make sure the chips don’t build up under the bed near the header pipe.

 

Looks good Dave... ...

 

Locks like your baking a potato on the hood of your tractor in the one photo!

 

Wow DaveGunter! ... haven't been on here lately. Had NO idea you'd done all that trail work. Really impressive. Good news is it looks as though there's plenty of room to keep the trail build fun going...

 

Chicken sammich

 

The next section of the trail is very “bony”, lots of large rocks/exposed ledge with deep irregular shaped holes in between. When the forestry mulching contractor did work for me after the harvest, he used a small excavator to pick rocks out of the way of the mulching machine, so I have a lot of boulders just sitting on the surface to work with. Maine generally has lots of rock just sitting on the surface anyway.

 

You've got a cool section of trail leveled, with a dual use too... squirrels, mice, etc are gonna love all of those small caves underneath...

 

Off road dump trailer, walking axle, 2500lb capacity, front and sides come off easily, sides come off with a couple bolts so you can make it a flatbed, I added the plywood sides, should hold just about 1 full yard of dirt.






Accidentally put my log tongs through the chipper, it did not go well for either the tongs or the chipper blades.