 Creating my Pasture
I've been working on this for years. It started out as a heavily wooded area. I took out the trees and graded out the ground. The grass came in naturally and for the last few years, I've been mowing it a few times a year. It gets better and better looking, but it's still full of weeds. I got my applicators license last week, so now I can buy the good chemicals for taking care of the weeds.
That was the easy part.
Since then, I've been moving dirt. There were two issues with this area, and both were too much dirt. In one area, I had a hill that I wanted removed. It was very steep and sent my water runoff from the rains the wrong direction. The other area was a long, low hill that also sent the water runoff from the rains in the wrong direction. I took care of the steep hill first. While there is still more of it left, I have enough removed to move over to the other area.
I started this by digging a ditch through the low hill to send water to my large pond, Lake Marabou. The ditch worked great at increasing the amount of water that Lake Marabou received, but it looked ugly. I've been removing the soil along the sides of the ditch to make it look natural. Then I've been pushing that soil with my dozer to level off the land for some building pads. The farther out I pushed the soil, the less effective the dozer became.
Then I started digging and hauling the dirt with the dump truck over the weekend. That's where I'm at right now. Digging and hauling. The entire area is about ten acres. In some of the pictures, you can see the grass that has been growing for a few years now, and the dirt that I've been working. In the background of one picture, you can see Fort Peyton, which is my deer blind and a project that I finished earlier this year.
One of the biggest problems with hauling dirt this time of the year is the moisture content of the dirt. It becomes like glue when it's wet and it sticks to everything. Then it just builds up and gets worse and worse. One of my biggest struggles is just getting the soil out of the bucket and then out of the dump truck. Last year, I heard about a paint called Hammerite. It's a paint that is used on rusted metal to seal in the rust and give the metal a smooth finish. I used it last year with fantastic results. My dump truck bed is very rusted and was holding allot of material. After applying the Hammerite paint, it was night and day how much better the wet clay came out of the bed. Last week, I did this again. The paint is $75 a gallon, and it takes about 3/4 of a gallon to do my five yard dump truck. I pressure washed the bed and applied the paint after it was dry. It went on fine, but the next day,it felt kind of rubbery. Last time, it was hard and glass like. It reminded me of slag. I'm not sure if it's because I put on a second layer, or if it wasn't hot enough for it to dry properly. It was in the mid 70's, which should have been fine. Either way, it didn't work out so good this time and I've been fighting the sticking clay to the bed. I get about 6 or 7 loads and have to use the shovel to clean off the bed while it's tilted up to clean off the sticking clay. If I let it go longer, it just builds up and I have a yard or more of clay stuck to the dump bed. If I load dry clay, it slides right out. I was also trying to dig dryer clay for the bottom of the load and then topping it off with the wetter stuff. That helped, but I never got over ten loads without having to shovel the bed clean.
There is about 460 yards in the picture before I started grading it out with the dozer. I still need about twice that much to finish off the area I'm building up, which I hope is what I have left in the area I'm digging. The moisture in the soil is great for compaction, but a challenge to spread. I spent a few hours on it before dark, but will have to spend allot more time to get it right. I still have allot more dirt to haul, so it's not that big a deal to have it perfect just yet. I'm also eyeballing my grade, so that will also have to be checked with the laser level.
Eddie |