Posts Tagged ‘getting stuck’
Messy Mistake
There is a reason I turn off the electric fence when I mow. Yesterday, I demonstrated precisely what that reason is. When we walked around the back pasture in the morning, the ground was so saturated it was obvious I wouldn’t be able to mow along the fence line there. With more rain expected in the morning, I figured I wouldn’t be cutting grass anywhere, despite it growing so fast lately it needs to be mowed every couple of days.
That rain never fell. By lunchtime, it was starting to get sunny out so I figured I better do some mowing. It was mesmerizing. The new battery-powered zero-turn was making great progress with plenty of juice to spare. I headed out around the back pasture without thinking. That was a mistake.
By the time I was reminded of the saturated ground, I couldn’t turn out of it. I wasn’t able to back up and got stuck against the wire fence. To extricate the mower I needed to get some boards and a jack from the shop. I lifted up the front so I could point the wheels away from the fence and set them down on top of the boards. That almost worked but the rear wheels were still stuck spinning in their own divots.
Another trip back to the shop for more boards to shove beneath the rear wheels got me away from the fence and free to spin my way along until I reached dryer ground. I came back later with a push mower and finished cutting that section by hand.
The biggest victory of the day was that I didn’t beat myself up over getting into the mess in the first place.
I am loving my new mower but I have a long way to go toward controlling it well enough to stay out of trouble and stop making skid marks when I turn around on slopes. If the ground would get a chance to dry out, that might help. So, maybe July?
****************
Just in case anyone was wondering, today is my sister, Mary’s birthday.
Happy Birthday, Marebare! 🙂
[It being her birthday has nothing to do with Messy or a Mistake. That was all on me.]
.
.
Snow Cope
In a day of glorious sunshine yesterday, I labored to move what felt like an endless amount of snow. I succeeded in burying the Grizzly 660 ATV over the edge of the gravel drive around the hayshed. That forced me to get the diesel tractor started, but it wouldn’t be any help unless I could get chains mounted on the tires.
Those chains have been hanging in storage on nails in the back of the shop garage for two years and are so heavy that I can barely lift them. That is one reason I have found every possible reason to avoid using them for so long. Alas, necessity forces muscles to do what it takes and chains quickly became an afterthought while attention moved to dragging the ATV out of the snow and carefully maneuvering the Ford tractor to scoop snow into small mountains without getting it stuck, too.
By the end of the day, I was about halfway done with cleanup. Today I resume clearing snow off the eaves of the house roof and then shoveling away everything that drops onto the deck.
The horses appear to be coping well with the quick transition to deep snow cover and tracks reveal they are making gradual advances on excursions out into the hayfield and back pasture.
The snow up around the overhang is well-trodden so it doesn’t seem all that deep but frozen clumps clinging above hooves provide evidence of the depth they are negotiating out in the fields.
We expect a few more days with highs above freezing and moments of sunshine that will give the horses plenty of opportunities to dry out between their journeys out into the powder.
Coping with all the snow is what we do, even when it requires effort at the limits of available strength at any given moment.
Robustness r us.
.
.
Necessity Invents
I was running out of options, in regard to clearing snow. In addition to the advancing drifts narrowing the bottom half of our driveway, we are facing the possibility of more heavy, wet snow this coming weekend. If I don’t open up some space, the next snowfall would really be a pain to clear.
Necessity being the mother of invention, I needed to figure out a way to open more width along the rise where the drifting occurs.
It was tedious, but using the most available tool –our Grizzly plow– I decided to make a series of 45-degree pushes in little “bites” to move the bank out wider. In the first 20 feet, I got stuck twice, and needed to shovel my way out.
Getting hung up like that was not going to cut it, if I was going to finish this project all at once. I needed to alter my technique.
I decided to skip ahead to focus on the narrowest section first. If getting stuck was going to keep me from getting very far, I should at the very least widen the narrowest portion of the plowed driveway.
I can’t say it was any particular savvy on my part, other than recognizing what was happening, but my switch to a new spot arbitrarily reversed my direction so that I was cutting into the snow bank from the opposite angle. In so doing, I ended up pushing first with the skinny side of the plow blade.
It quickly became apparent that this orientation facilitated backing out, while coming from the other direction was getting me hung up on the wide end of the blade.
I didn’t get stuck once finishing the rest of that whole southern stretch of the driveway.
John – 1; Drifts – 0.
I win!
.
.
.
.
.
Sand Box
After work yesterday, I went outside to play in our sand box. It wasn’t pretty. There were a few expletives expressed in the execution of the task.
We had an extra load of lime screenings dumped beside the hay shed for use in filling low spots and rills in the paddock. The horses kick constantly in response to flies on their legs and their doing so digs out the area around their hay boxes. The rills on the slope are created by water runoff from heavy rains.
Both issues require trying to get the tractor up the incline to the barn, with a heavy bucket load of lime screenings. I have yet to acquire the skills and knowledge to efficiently navigate the 12 forward gears of the New Holland to get it to go where I want to go and do what I intend to achieve without spinning the wheels and creating almost as much damage as that which I am trying to mend.
It’s crazy-making.
It should be fun, playing in sand with my big tractor. Problem is, it is also a bit dangerous and can be costly.
Right off the bat, with the first scoop of screenings, I got stuck at the bump built up to divert water runoff at the gate into the paddock. I didn’t approach with enough momentum to get over it, and since it is downhill from the driveway, I suddenly couldn’t back up, either. The rear tires just spun when trying both directions, digging me deeper into being stuck with each attempt to coax out some progress of escape.
I ended up dumping the bucket right there and using the hydraulic loader to pry my way out of the predicament, as I have learned to do from my farmer neighbors. It would be nice if I took it as no big deal, but it pissed me off something fierce and set the negative tone for all my subsequent struggles of getting up the slopes to where I wanted to drop loads of screenings.
I couldn’t figure out the right combination of speed and power to make it up the hill with all the weight in the bucket. Halfway up the slope the rear wheels would start to lose grip and I would try to solve it with cursing.
Okay, cursing isn’t an attempt to solve the problem, it is a venting of frustration over having the problem and not succeeding in achieving a solution. But it feels like it helps.
Eventually, enough material was moved close enough to areas where it could be tossed by shovel to the spots most in need. The divots created by spinning tractor wheels were filled in and smoothed. The tractor didn’t tip over or smash into the fence, the barn posts, or the tree.
I got “back to grazing” pretty quickly and shed the negative vibe.
I suppose it’s not all that different from any kid playing in a sand box. Sometimes fun is mixed with frustration. The trick is learning how to deal with it constructively and come out ahead in the end.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 