Hi all,
My wife and I are about to close on a small rural property. about two acres of it lies on a fairly steep hillside (15-18%) that was cleared of timber, grew up in second growth brush and then cleared again. We intend to plant it all in fruit and nut trees, bramble fruits, grapes and berrries.
Our intention is to form the entire hillside with contoured swales, and I would like to do it without hiring heavy machinery. Rather than pay someone else, investing that money in equipment makes more sense.
Here's the question: our soil is similar to the below post, mostly gravelly clay overlaying chert rocks. I don't mind working gradually at this project using smaller machinery. It kind of sounds like a large walk behind (bcs 853, for example) with the berta plow might be an option. What happens when that thing hits a well buried rock? Will it just ride over it or am I risking equipment damage if the rocks get to big to be tossed aside by the blades?
other than that, it looks like earth could be moved sideways with successive passes to form the swales.
I really dont want to buy a four wheel tractor for the property in general; the walk behinds seem like a more appropriately sized technology, especially with the diesel engines and their potential for using biodiesel. Plus, I'm not thrilled at working that steep hill with a four wheel machine.
Has anybody used this setup for earth shaping in this manner? It seems like the model that allows switching the plow from side to side would be the one to use on a steep hillside.
I am willing to augment the basic tractor with extra wheels or wheel weights (or both) to aid traction if the basic setup has the power and ability to do the job.
While I am at it, I also need to fix the pond spillway and do some basic land shaping around the buildings. Anybody have experience using the dozer blade? Many passes with a small machine seems better than having a heavy yellow dozer compacting my soils any more than they are already.
I will be calling Earth Tools about all this, but welcom any input.
thanks
clarksvilleal said:
I have the Berta, and I can attest that it is not nearly as easy as it looks in the videos when plowing my ground for the first time. It was rocky, clay soil, and hard as brick with the drought we have had this summer. I am a reasonably strong 180 lb. man, and I had to fight with it and mandhandle it, not to mention curse at it now and then, to try to keep it going straight, and even then it still went its own crooked way sometimes. Seems like it just had bit of an ornery streak 'cause I made it work so hard.
However, it does work well for primary tillage. I tried the Rototiller first, and it was really slow going and just wouldn't go deep enough, even with a couple of passes. The rototiller works great on previously tilled ground, but not so good on hard, rocky, untilled ground. The Berta plowed really deep on the first pass, for the most part, unless it hit a big rock.
Speaking of rocks, the Berta threw out some rocks the size of a small cantaloupe, and many, many smaller ones as well. I carted away many 5-gal. buckets of rocks from a 30' x 60' area I was plowing.
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