Posts Tagged ‘wood chipper’
Finally Chipping
My plan was to get both the tractor and the ATV down the hill to the spot where I’m clearing trees to make space for a new fence that will enclose the back grazing area. I put a bundle of tools in the ATV trailer and drove it down, parking between two existing brush piles. Then I walked back up to get the diesel tractor with the wood chipper mounted on the back.
To my surprise, I found the front right tire was completely flat. That certainly wasn’t in my plan.
I pumped it up and verified the leak was serious enough to need attention. The morning agenda suddenly had a new priority. First order of business would involve getting the wheel off the tractor, no small task when you don’t have the proper tools. Five of the six bolts came loose with a reasonable amount of effort, leaving the one that was obligated not to budge, to keep the project from being too straight forward.
Patience —albeit thin— and fortitude, produced eventual results, leading to the second order of business: I needed to find out where to take the wheel for repair. A call to my neighbor produced a recommended service station in town, but that place turned out to be too busy to help me right away. They offered up an alternative. I called the second option and learned they could take a look at it right away.
Now, I definitely know better than to blindly rely on the results produced by a Google maps search, and I even commented to Cyndie that I was surprised it was that direction out-of-town, but nonetheless, I fell for it without a second thought.
After a pleasant drive to discover the error of my ways, which took me down into a beautiful valley where there is absolutely no cell signal, I turned around and drove back up to high ground so I could call for directions. Sure enough, I should have headed the other direction out-of-town. Ironically, this place is where I recently stopped to inquire about finding someone to bid improving the footing of our paddocks. Two businesses operate out of this one location.
They fixed my tire, patching a hole in the tube, and after I got it remounted on the tractor, I was back to my original plan. The rest of the afternoon involved chainsawing and wood chipping. Everything worked pretty well for the rest of the day. I took down some more trees, and created a pile of wood chips by the labyrinth, to be used as mulch.
Working through the dinner hour, and into the mosquito feeding frenzy of early evening, I cleared some of the nearby trail with the trimmer so I could dump a trailer-load of chips there. While doing that, I came to one of the fallen trees that has been blocking the trail since May. Not anymore. I cut it into logs to be split for firewood.
The flat tire was a hassle, but all’s well that ends well. I got a chance to test my ideas and it looks like things are going to work as well as we hoped. The chipper eats brush as fast as I can feed it and the wood chips look perfect for the trail and mulching around plants in the labyrinth.
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Late Night
I’m running a little slow this morning, after getting home around midnight last night from a trek to Minneapolis to see a Minnesota Twins baseball game with three great friends. It was my first time in the outdoor ball park which made it extra special and helped distract my attention from the tropical dew point that had the area under an excessive heat warning.
Today I will have an opportunity to take the cover off my new wood chipper to see the inner workings. Yesterday, in my rush to get things put away before I headed to the city, I needed to hook the chipper up to the back of the tractor. I pulled the locking pins from the two side mounts and with one in each hand, I reached up to push on the exhaust chute while looking down at the mount post.
In a hilarious way that seemed as if I must have intended to do this, I placed my hand on the chute right at the top near the opening and that locking clip dropped out of my grasp and rattled down inside. Oops.
I got everything parked in the garage, put Delilah in her outdoor kennel, fed the horses and was on my way, connecting with Julie to ride the light rail down to the stadium. It felt rather cosmopolitan to have transitioned so seamlessly from the tractor in my field to taking public transportation to dinner and a ball game in the big city.
We met Rich and Bob at Pizza Lucé for dinner and then walked to Target Field in the thick heat. After a brief tour to see several vantage points, we settled into our assigned seats to enjoy the early innings, from which we could see the left field flags waving, but only rarely felt a hint of the breeze. Midway through the game we set out to explore more of the stadium and to see if we could find more of that moving air, stopping to fill water bottles at the jugs of ice water provided for fan’s convenience. That was a particularly welcome gesture by the Twins organization to aid in keeping spectators hydrated.
We ended up in the very top row out in the left field upper deck, where it was downright comfortable, and from which I was able to spot the apartment building where my son, Julian lives.
I let Julian know and he headed up on the roof of his building where we were able to spot each other from over two blocks away. He said he couldn’t really make out where we were, so I directed him to look right next to the scoreboard and he replied that he could see someone waving.
“That’s Bob and Julie!” I exclaimed.
Simple things can be so rewarding. It goes along with the repeated scenes I witnessed the entire game long, of fans discovering their image was being broadcast on the big screen. Yahoo! Oh, and a baseball game happened, too. A Twins win!
Cyndie was sweet enough to let Delilah out this morning and she fed the horses as she left for work, so I was able to get a few more minutes of rest before facing today. Now I’m going to go find that locking pin that is resting inside the business end of the wood chipper.
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Weather Weary
The first full week with Cyndie working her new job and me working at home as full-time ranch manager is behind us. She came home and went to bed with a headache and I am physically exhausted from working 14-hour days. Will the weekend offer us a chance to relax? I’m not sure.
I wasn’t able to get out and test the new wood chipper yesterday, after a morning of rain and an afternoon of hauling hay. I stacked 80 more bales in the hay shed. It’s beginning to look respectable.
I wish I could say the same about our uncut field. As feared, the weeds are maturing and weather hasn’t offered us much chance for enticing any willing neighbors to help turn it into bales.
I take some solace in the fact we are not alone in being unable to cut. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about the tribulations hay growers are facing this year. We are lucky to have found a supplier who has some high ground, though he still battles the frustration of squeezing the process of cutting and baling into the short number of days between deluges.
Ideally, the process involves at least 3 dry days in a row, but we’ve been hard pressed to get 2, and the rain amounts have continued to be significant. That means the next sunny day or two after a rain event are often lost to waiting for the ground to dry up again. It just doesn’t seem to happen.
This also impacts my plan to do some wood chipping. One of the first areas with cut branches that I am hoping to grind into chips is at the bottom of a hill in a very wet spot. Getting down there with my tractor holds the potential of becoming a muddy, messy affair.
No matter how much control we pretend to have about eventual outcomes, the days will always be a delicate balance, subject to whatever nature chooses to offer or inhibit.
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New Accessory
No more burning brush piles for us. Yesterday, I brought home a new chipper that will be powered by the PTO of the diesel tractor. We could use the wood chips and we have plenty of brush to grind up, so it is a win-win for us.
I’m a little worried that I might turn into a chipping monster now that I have one of these things. I guess it will depend on whether I can stand the racket it likely makes, and how well it actually functions.
I was able to use the tractor to lift it off the truck, and once on the ground, get the chipper mounted on the 3-point hitch on the back. Then I needed to pour through the manual for information on how to use it. The instructions are very simple and straight forward. The hardest part was wading through the pages and pages of safety warnings to get to the operating instructions.
So, today I hope to get a chance to fire it up and give it a try. It will be tricky because I’ve been informed there are hay bales available for pick up from our new supplier, and that project has first priority whenever it isn’t raining. I’ve got 160 bales already stacked inside our hay shed, but that’s less than a third of what we are hoping to stock pile to get us through next winter.
It is pleasing to discover that for our purposes, the size of the hay shed we built has turned out to be perfect.
If we add any more equipment after this wood chipper, I think we’re gonna need another garage. I got it to fit inside the shop garage, but just barely. I’m happy that Cyndie and I both share a strong desire to avoid storing equipment outside on the property. We’ve given in once already, for the truck, but we’d like to leave it at that if we are able.
That just means that before we can add anything else, we will have to get rid of something to make room. Check with me in about a year and we’ll see how well that plan works for us.
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Relative Something 