A GREAT TOOL FOR THE JOB!

A lot of my life lately has been experimental experience.

While I am fully aware that actual how-to videos and such exist, for some reason I just like to figure things out by myself and see what happens. Using this front-end loader with a backhoe attachment is one of the recent things that I have been experimenting with.

IT SURE BEATS LIFTING THESE THE OLD FASHIONED WAY

After uprooting all the trees that I needed to in order to make room for the mobile home and cutting the trees and branches up, I still had a huge mess to deal with. Although the quantity of things to pick up was far reduced, the size of the items were incredible. Mostly, I has giant logs and huge stumps to move.

Without a team of mules, I'm not even sure what I could do with this stump on my own. I could perhaps use a log as a lever and maybe get it out of the hole, but that would be about it. Since some of these are so heavy, I even had to be careful when attempting to get them out of the hole with the equipment. Did I mention that I am a complete novice at all of this too?

The larger stumps had to be removed from the hole with the backhoe and then pushed off to the side with the tractor. Smaller stumps could be carried in the bucket, and although I would move these manually, it was still much easier with the equipment, so I took advantage of it.

When I was cutting up the logs for firewood with the chainsaw, I left a lot of the larger trunks more intact. I plan on purchasing a portable sawmill from a neighbor up the street once he finishes with it. When that happens, I can mill my own lumber, so saving bigger logs like will come in handy.

With a little finesse and some careful placement, I was able to pick up these incredibly heavy logs and move them. The shorter ones fit in the bucket just fine, but larger logs had to be scooped with the backhoe. Some of these caused the tractor to rock a little, so I took things slow.

Eventually I was able to make a nice pile of logs to be used later. They are out of the way enough for now, but easy enough to access when I do need them later. I could have probably rolled these all together by hand if need be, but it would have taken me hours to do so, and would have been more dangerous too.

PROGRESS AND JOB RECAP

About a week ago I began clearing a section for an 80 foot by 16 foot mobile home on our property. We are getting it from a friend and are going to use it to get our family actually on our land while we decided what to do next. We are still contemplating how to build our home and making sure that this is where we are supposed to be. The photo above shows one cluster of trees that had to be removed.

After uprooting the trees and tipping them over, I had a huge mess to clean up with the chainsaw. I picked up all the branches and then cut the firewood pieces into lengths that would be movable to stack for later. That left the large logs and stumps, which I cleaned up yesterday, as shown earlier in the post.

Now the area is mostly flat and tree-free. The dirt section in the center of the photo above is where the tree cluster shown earlier was originally located. By placing the mobile home in this location, we will be leaving the house site open while still being able to use the power, water, and septic tank. Day by day, but we are still moving forward! It's required that I learn a lot of new skills and experiment to figure out exactly how to get things done, but it's been working!