New Tractor Implements

Hi everyone, it's guest author Chad at the keyboard today, for a long-delayed post about this year's collection of toys, I mean, tools!

These were a massive pain to get delivered.  When we ordered the tractor, we paid extra for liftgate service, which is a smaller truck with a lift on the back for them to deliver items at ground level.  Then we got a call from the freight carrier, saying that they didn't have such a thing!  We ended up bringing our trailer up, and having a forklift operator come down to the parking lot to drop it in.

This time, that's what we planned for: pickup at the depot.  It was too wet to repeat the direct-to-trailer operation, I couldn't source a dock-height rental truck (for real businesses only!!!), and in the end, we found out that liftgate service was available.  We just had to wait until the truck didn't have other customers scheduled.

Here I am in our garage with the delivery at the end of May.  The chipper/shredder and power barrow were in boxes, while the log splitter shipped fully assembled.

Some assembly was required for the power barrow, in the flat box down front.  It came as the poly tub with frame pieces, wheels, and hardware all inside of it.  It also has a dump feature.  We got it all assembled, but never got a good shot of it in action while we moved two loads of wood down to the pallets for storage.  Alas.

To the right in the picture is the mounting to the tractor, and above that, the handle for dumping (click the picture to zoom; that handle doesn't stand out well, but it has a silver U-bolt around it.)  Running underneath along each side are two garage door springs to help it drive straight.  The "do not double stack" sticker on the side is my silly joke. 😁

Carefully packed into the tall cardboard box was our chipper/shredder.  This thing is a beast.  According to the spec sheet, it can chip branches up to 3.5 inches, and it requires the larger walking tractors in order to power it.  Starting it requires "bumping" the clutch a few times, to avoid putting too much load on it all at once.

Anyway, in front of the cabin, there's an area of yard that the creek bends around.  All along the side, some serious brush had grown up, and maybe it was also a convenient place to throw branches "out of the way."  We also had some limbs off of some deadwood we cut near the cabin to turn into firewood as well.

So we drove the chipper down to the cabin under tractor power, and chipped a whole lot of sticks and limbs, and a bit of green brush.  It chews right through 2-inch stuff without breaking a sweat.  We captured the chips onto a tarp, lifted that into a cart, and hauled it back for paths in the garden.  But we only got pictures of the equipment being prepared.

Our last implement is the log splitter.  That was tested out early on, then pulled out again recently to split down all the deadwood we've taken from various places.  There was the big tree that split last year on the tree line between us and neighbor Janet.  The cabin's yard had an apple tree down in it, and we had the other deadwood from the cabin area.  There are even a few pieces of maple that we brought from our old house, when the city butchered the trees out front to replace the electric poles.

So we got the log splitter out and got to work.  There were still pieces that were too long, so those had to be sawed down, producing a lovely set of chips on the grass.  (If the chain is dull or the wood is rotten, then it'll produce dust instead.)

After everything was right-sized, they went on the splitter, to be pushed into the four-way wedge.  We mounted that low, so it produces two small pieces and two medium bits at the same time, or sometimes more if the wood is feeling particularly weird. 

Then we piled up our wood to see how much we've made from this project.  There's a bit of older stuff, from our first test run, at the bottom/right; it has weathered to gray over the course of the summer.  The rest of it, much more tan, is freshly split.

Here's a wide-angle comparison with our other two loads of purchased firewood.  Mostly.  There's some more weathered stuff on the top of the left section, which is what was left over from last winter.  We had expected to be "getting ahead on wood" by buying three loads every year, then burning around two, but last winter got started early and hung on forever.  We were burning from late September through May 31st!  We ended up with less left over this year than last, but at least we didn't have to order more wood in mid-season.  I'm sure that's neither cheap nor fun.

We got our last load of purchased firewood delivered the other day, too.  It's waiting to come down for storage.  The poor guy delivered it in the morning, and got stuck in the yard because of the dew.  He called his dad to pull him out.  He was kind enough not to make a huge mess of the yard first.

We now end our broadcast day with our traditional cat pictures.

Until next time!