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:

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!? 

On the steep in El Reno

This rural customer on the far edge of El Reno has a large, steep drop-off at the back of her 2.5 acre home site.  Because of the slope and the busyness of life in general, she had let it grow up beyond the capabilities of her riding mower and needed my help.  She was thrilled with the work and we have a backhoe project coming up next to manicure the rest of her property.

In total, the mowing area was probably only about 1 acre but there were lots of down limbs and debris to contend with in the mowing process.

Here are some consecutive before-and-after shots.  Remember, the camera can't capture the depth of field necessary to fully contextualize the steep slope here.

Brush Hog in da Fog

MAN THIS WAS A BEAUTIFUL START TO THE DAY!!

There were a couple of times on the morning drive where visibility dropped to below a 1/4 mile.  It was extremely dense, to say the least.

But, while that made for some slower driving, it also made for a dramatic sunrise.  Here are a few pics of the day as it got started.

This was one of those mostly flat fields with only slight elevation changes that look so well-groomed when finished.

Bush hog, brush hog, brushhog, rotary mower....shredder???

Every now and then, people refer to brush hogs as shredders (you did know that, didn't you?)  In case you were wondering why, this before and after pic will give you an idea.  It took less than 15 minutes to shred this entire pile of limbs, some of which were oak of almost 2 inches in diameter.

One of the less obvious complications of having something like a brush hog that goes by so many names is when you're a Craigslist addict like me who is looking for a good deal on a used one.  There are no less than five search terms that have a reasonable chance of turning up the bargain I'm looking for.

And there is your brush hog/shredder lesson for today, friends.

Mud Bog Brush Hog

I've had some muddy tractor jobs before...like this one:

But this was the first time I'd ever brush hogged moss!

The customer owned an area of land that is basically a city drainage retention pond and it was a MESS.  The cattails are absolutely horrible about sending out seeds that can clog a radiator and cause a tractor to overheat.

The other tough part about this job is that the field was still littered with tornado debris from the 2013 tornadoes that ravaged Moore.  There's nothing like cruising along and BAM BAM BAM...hitting a chunk of metal buried in the weeds.  No matter how closely you watch for such stuff, sometimes you just can't see it.

Here's the tame view of the job when I first showed up.  Boy, did things change quickly!

I immediately hit this:

And at one point, the water had been standing there so long I actually brush hogged...MOSS!

I had to run with my bucket up (not ideal) in many places just to keep the bucket from knocking dust and seeds up into the radiator.

At one point, my tractor was actually practically floating over the mud on the very very thick reeds. Had I had skinnier tires or a heavier tractor, I would have sunk to the axles instantly.  It was very deep, thick, mushy mud.  You can't tell from the pics the danger that mess that lurked below.

Here's what things looked like when I was done.  It took me an hour to get the mud washed off!  Too bad I don't get to count that as part of the billable time. ;)

Chinaberry Chaos

How do you mow a mess so thick that you can't even walk through it?  Strategically, as it turns out.

Contrary to intuition, there's more to brush hogging the thick stuff than just pointing the tractor in one direction and start driving. This was a particularly tricky job because there was barbed wire (oh was there barbed wire!) lurking along what at one time was an old fence.  I was hired to simply clear the fence line but as the land owner and I worked together, we quickly learned it was going to be a much bigger task.  There was barbed wire littered and hidden in the thick brush as well as many rotten fence posts.

Generally one will back into these thickets with the brush hog running at optimum RPM's.  Sometimes that is not an option.  When you drive into this stuff, you have to be committed because backing up is not a good option.  Once the trees are bent over, backing up can turn them into something akin to those tire-puncturing spikes at access-control gates.  The difference here is that it's not tires we are worried about but hydraulic hoses, radiators, fuel and hydraulic filters, etc.  They can be quickly punctured in situations like this.

Here is a beginning shot as well as a follow-up view after the first stage of the project. The trees ranged from 4 feet to 8 feet tall and 0.5 in to 3 inches in diameter.

The new fence will run down this newly opened lane.

Barbed wire...man that's nasty stuff.  

Wrapped up real nice, eh?

After we turned the corner to head back east, the mature trees were so thick I had to wind my way back into the new fence line via quite a circuitous route. 

Here's a before pic.

And then after, from the same vantage point.

A final walk through and inspection by the boss man!  He was thrilled and has future plans for our next project together.