Pretty in Piedmont

One of the things I LOVE about this job is sharing with genuine enthusiasm a landowner/homeowner's excitement for where they live (or will soon live).  Such was the case with this project halfway between Piedmont and Cashion.

When possible, I like to start every project at my favorite time of day.  Ideally, I get to work before the sun does.  On these cold mornings, I let the hydraulics warm up while the sun makes its entrance and I enjoy the show.















The driveway started out rutted and rough, to say the least.  These pictures were taken on my first surveying trip to the property.

Notice the hackberry trees there running right through where the landowner wanted their new access.  I removed over 30 trees, a few of which were 4-5 inches in diameter, in 15-20 minutes using the loader.  I'd normally like to use a backhoe for this task but this was one of the many times where we had to call an audible with the project barely underway.

Midway through tree removal.

Shooting some grades with the 360 degree rotary laser.

Let the grading begin.

What to do with all that dirt?  The landowner had a low spot that was suffering from a LOT of erosion.  I used the extra dirt to build about a 2ft swale to re-direct the water off his property and back into the county drainage.  The red lines I added show where the water originally dumped left (in the picture) onto this land.  My hat in the left of the picture shows the elevation change and the tractor is sitting in the middle of the new runoff area. Prior, most of the watershed in this area dumped straight onto his land.

Some before and after pics of the main grading project. The picture does a good job of underestimating just how much dirt was re-located down the hill. It was A LOT.

BozHog rides again to the next jobsite! :-)

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.

Now THAT'S an office with a view

My view when I showed up at "the office" a couple days ago. It was beautiful.

More winter brushhogging and land clearing

A long drive down to the Slaughterville/Noble area made for a great day in a fairly remote area.  The temp was still in the 20's when I showed up so the otherwise wet, muddy ground was still hard as a rock.

Some before and after shots of the rough, rugged area.

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New driveway add-on via a retaining wall

Every now and then I get to work on a project that, when finished, the result is something much more than purely aesthetic.

We're not yet finished but with a couple sessions on-site, the results are working out great.

The young man with whom I've been working is confined to a wheelchair due to a freak swimming incident.  He didn't dive in and hit his head on the bottom of the pool but instead crashed head first into the side of an above ground pool.  The injuries were instant and near deadly.  I'll not go into the full details here except to say that it's been a pleasure to meet this young man and help build a spot where he can park his new wheelchair accessible van.

It was almost dark and absolutely freezing when I finished so I forgot to take pictures of just the dirt.

Before:

After - he can now turn his van around at the top of the driveway and not back blindly down the otherwise steep drive.

Winter Brushhoggin'

For obvious reasons, I don't get too many brushhogging jobs in the winter.  But this week I was called upon to brushhog a new home purchase just out of foreclosure.  It took the owners FOUR MONTHS to close the deal and when they finished, they called me immediately.  We'd been in contact for several months prior because they wanted the work done as soon as the final paperwork was signed.

As usual, the field mice were the biggest losers in the deal!  They really just hate to see me coming. :)

This is a before picture of hundreds of 1-2 inch diameter trees that had grown out of control.  By carefully backing into them with a solid brushhog at high speed, they can be relatively easily mowed down and chopped into mulch that will bio-degrade relatively quickly

In the 'after' picture, you can see how the trees have been knocked down and can easily be picked up for other uses or mowed over with a riding mower

This was a nice little semi-urban location and it was fun to see the owner's excitement as one more milestone in their project was achieved.

Beautifying an Edmond backyard

This customer had a beautiful backyard but it was full of debris and stumps (which was part of their cleanup process before I arrived.)  In the clean up process, I dug up over 50 stumps and moved almost a dozen large piles of limbs and wood into various piles in prep for small, occasional burns.  These piles would have taken forever to move by hand.

In the before pics, you can see their view barely extended halfway through their yard and from the back of the yard itself, you couldn't even see their house.

The end result looks fantastic!  They now have their backyard back and ready for seeding or whatever they choose.