While working at the land for the week in April, I used the skidsteer to remove a tree where I intend to add a new gate to the property. The tree is immediately under power wires and recently had the top cut out by the power company when they connected my new meter. I figure it is now more of an eyesore and removing once the new gate is in place would be rather difficult.
After removing the tree, I also added a little dirt to smooth the incline to the road were the new fence will be placed. It is not perfect but I wanted to raise the soil level where the final post for the gate will be located. This will make it a little easier to attach the gate without it being placed exceptionally high on the final fence post.
I measured out the location of the new fence and added two T post to mark when the two fence posts will be placed. I'll mimic the existing fence design with two 56" fence posts 8' apart with smaller pipe welded along the top. Once painted black, it will look like it was put up with the rest of the current fencing.
I've picked up some pipe of the correct size for the fence work. I'll need to work on how to cope it so the joins are tight fitting so that I can weld it all together. Additionally, I've need to work out a way to get a generator at the property which will run my 220 welder.
This weekend, I started my first burn pile. The pile consisted of two tree trunks, two old root balls from the field, and a large amount of cedar bows. The pile lit quick and burned fast. Once the cedar burned fully, the burn pile reached a much more controllable size. We then added more brush to it over the next two or three hours.
The brush we added to the pile came from another nearby pile.
We burned nearly the entire second burn pile except for several really large stumps. We will use that for the base of another burn pile. The stumps in that pile are much larger. They will require a full weekend of time at the land rather than just a day trip.
When done, we put the burn pile out with water and covered any slight hot spots with sand.
At the end of the burn, we stopped adding wood and just let the stumps burn for a while. Since it had no risk of spreading, I added grass seed to a few of the areas in which I spread out dirt piles with the skid steer. Specifically, I did the three spots on the east side around the entrance to the feeder trail and in two spots along the south side trail to the feeder. I would have done more but it was hot and raking a little sand over the seed afterwards got old quite quickly.
On Tuesday, I started to notice the right bucket cylinder on the skid steer began to leak excessively. It was leaking so much I could not continue and it needed to be fixed. My dad and I worked together and fixed it Wednesday morning which kept me from using it except for about three hours in the evening.
Friday was my last day with the skid steer. I'd done most of the clearing needed. I decided to work around the deer stand some before doing finish work around the property. I'd be working feverishly and the finish work would include smoothing tire tracks, piling up yaupon removed, and catching any yaupon that I missed during the week.
When finishing up clearing a little on the shooting lane at the deer stand, the left bucket cylinder line busted. I had another one made at a place 35 minutes away only to find they made it with a wrong fitting. I made the trip again to find they did not crimp it well and it leaked from the fitting. My the time this was done, I'd lost all of the final day of using the skid steer. Quite disappointed.
I received an ClearStream4 antenna for Christmas and with electricity now have reason to install it. I tested it one morning while at the cabin and found that the hill we are on allows for really good reception when the antenna is simply mounted to the exterior of the cabin.
I picked up a small Samsung television the week before going to the cabin. I hooked it up and checked reception and easily receive 30 different channels. I expected to receive only four channels so I'm quite excited. My wife and kids will enjoy time at the land much more with a TV to watch in the evenings.
Shortly after buying our property, I started to notice numerous piles of debris on the edges of the wooded area of the property. My assumption is the debris was piled up when the paths and fence were created anything in the way was pushed into piles.
My dad allowed me to use his skid steer for some work on the property this week. One of the many items I planned was to work on eliminating a few of these piles of debris. I worked through a few of the piles and made some early progress but it was not progressing as fast as expected.
What is unique is that the piles don't consist of tree and dirt mixed. The dirt is toward the fence side of the pile. Beyond it is all of the trees which were removed. I suppose they pushed the trees down and into a pile at the tree line. They then leveled the ground and pushed excess dirt into the pile.
I can't move all the wood as my entire property would essentially be a burn pile. I can work on that later and use the skid steer to move the dirt piles to revel the wood. The wood will decay faster this way and I can access it to burn later if needed.
I cleared 14 of the areas and then decided I might want to count what is left as the process was taking too long. I then took a map and drove around marking the various piles and found there were 23 left to remove.
I cleared about eight more piles but continued to find more. Yaupon brush has grown in front of and over most of the dirt piles which make it difficult to see them initially. Sometimes I would find them as I removed some Yaupon but other times it is just visible with some careful looking.
At this point, I decided to stop and put the rest of my time with the skid steer in areas which my family and I would benefit from more and perhaps find time to deal with these piles later.
I spent roughly a day and a half of time with the skid steer on clearing some area of yaupon slightly downhill from the cabin.
There is also evidence of the field being cleared in the past. There are several piles of dirt and large rocks which were pushed together. I focused on clearing the yaupon first but I'll need to address the piles as the yaupon will likely grow back and if I can't mow it then it can't be maintained.
The goal is to create a two acre area downhill from the cabin which would add to the view and give us more area as the rest of the land is wooded.
Today, I shared the rental of a trenching machine with my dad. We used the machine to trench the 100 feet from the service pole to the circuit box on the cabin. The trench was 14" deep at the shallowest point which placed my 2" conduit a full 12" under ground.
With the trench complete, I glued together 10 pieces of schedule 40 PVC. The 10th piece needed to be cut slightly in order to fit perfectly in the trench. Once cut, I glued a 90 degree bend on each side and dropped the conduit into the trench.
With the conduit somewhat in place, I ran the electrical cable through the conduit with a pull rope in case I need to run anything through the conduit later. I then cut two lengths of conduit and glued them to the 90's to complete the connection to the circuit breaker box on the cabin and the opposite side on the service pole.
While the electrical cable I ran included an 8 gauge ground wire, I installed an 8' grounding rod at the cabin similar to what I installed at the electrical pole.
A few connections later and the pre-wired cabin was ready. It is quite nice to have electricity in the cabin. It opens up several opportunities that did not exist before. The timing was perfect as I took the week off work to stay the rest of the week at the cabin.
