A thrill on blackberry hill

Probably the biggest risk of tractorin' is a rollover incident. Sure, you can get injured or even killed by interacting with a running PTO, or by a powered implement or...  But day in and day out, the bigger risk on uneven terrain is probably that of a rollover. This little hill, which is part of a much larger 7 acre brush hogging job, is always a challenge.

In addition to the slope, the blackberry thorns really bite!

Here's a before view of the slope along their drive:

And after...cameras are awesome about making slopes look less steep than they really are.

This land was COVERED in blackberry bushes.  This is great in the early summer when I need a snack though. ;)

Before and after:

Choctaw driveway repair

This project was one of three different projects I've done so far for this customer/new friend.

The young couple is an Air Force family who lives on several acres in a wonderful little house in the middle of the property.  Their driveway had reached the point where their passenger car could almost not navigate it anymore.

When I arrived, here is what I found. The end of their driveway was constantly under water anytime it rained.  The tin horn was also plugged on both ends.

After a few hours of work, the driveway looked great.

Aside from grading the driveway (the customer was not ready to pay yet for gravel), the most important thing I did was build a swale on the uphill side of the road. Flowing water is terribly damaging so we want to keep it OFF the driveway in as much as possible.

Even after heavy storms, this is what the driveway looked like a few weeks later.  When the customer is ready, it'll make a perfect bed for some good crusher run gravel.

Piedmont fenceline follow-up

The primary reason this great customer in Piedmont had me out several times was, among other things, to clear the way for a new fence.

Here is where we started:

And here's the latest view.  Looking good Mr. O!

Downtown drainage project - Phase II

When the customer was ready for round 2, we moved fast to beat the rains that were headed our way that same evening.  It was a definite rush to action and we beat the weather but just a couple hours.

HERE is a description of Phase 1 of the project.

On Phase II, the customer wanted an unsightly hill taken down on his yard.  Turn out, it was full of construction debris and lots of concrete refuse. You can see the hill in red in this picture. He also wanted it to roughly match grade with the blue circled area in the center right of the pic.

After I was finished with the project, I drove by the next day during the rain to see how things looked.  Drainage was PERFECT, just as we'd spec'd out.

The water used to back up and cover almost the entire concrete part of this driveway.

There was no longer ponding in the yard, either.

The view from the street shows a very even flow through the entire area.

Small jobs are fun, too

As part of a small brushhogging job, this customer had a tangled mess right in their backyard.  The pictures don't tell the whole story about how thick the mess was with thick shrubs, small trees, and fallen limbs.  It only took about 20 minutes with the tractor to do what would have taken several hours to do by hand.

Here are some before and after pics:

A Sleepy Hollow-esque driveway project

I'm so very proud to have partnered on a recent project with Blueberry Hill Events (http://bbhevents.com/) here in Oklahoma City.  This really is an amazing and unique venue for weddings and parties of all kinds.  The property is simply incredible and it might make you forget you are practically in the heart of the city.

The owner had a clever vision for using an otherwise unusable part of their property.  She wanted a road down a very narrow easement so that guests could meet up with the parking valets, enter the property through a restored barn, and the valet could take their car to a hidden parking area out of site.

We started with this:

And had to quickly spread it evenly about 300ft down this path. The elevation change from top to bottom was about 15ft.

In less than a couple of hours, we had transformed the area into this road through the woods:

The parking area at the bottom of the hill cleverly hides the cars from the wedding area:

Prepping the family farm to sell

It's always a little sad for me to see family farm land finally reach a generation that, often for many very good reasons, is no longer interested in living on an acreage.  This 78 acres has been in their family for a few generations but is being prepped to sell.  That's where I came in.

Like most days, this one started off with a beautiful sunrise over the subject property and an old outbuilding there.

After years of neglect, much of the land had been consumed by briers and brambles. See how they lean sideways? The sole purpose of this design is to poke as many holes as possible into the skin of the dude on the tractor!

No matter how hard I try to spot these obstacles before I hit them, every now and then some stray wire will sneak in and slow me down. This mess only took a few minutes to clear from the brush hog.

Clearing this fenceline was by far the toughest task of the morning.  Not only was it very steep, as you can see it was full of more brambles.

Even so, the finished product turned out great, don't you think!?