Biggest projects you've completed with your 'bota?

[tractchores]

I'm jealous of everyone who has nice rock-free soil. Every time I try to dig a hole it seems like I hit a rock the size of a Volkswagen! Amazing to see some of these projects. My biggest have been putting in 300' of french drains, rebuilding a bunch of stone walls with the BH and thumb and clearing land and creating a new lawn (wood chipper, BH for stumps and rocks and FEL for loam and leveling).

 

[Jay4200]

I'm jealous of everyone who has nice rock-free soil.

Rock-free soil? I always thought rocks WERE soil. They are here, anyway...

JayC

 

[CHDinCT]

I'm jealous of everyone who has nice rock-free soil. Every time I try to dig a hole it seems like I hit a rock the size of a Volkswagen! Amazing to see some of these projects. My biggest have been putting in 300' of french drains, rebuilding a bunch of stone walls with the BH and thumb and clearing land and creating a new lawn (wood chipper, BH for stumps and rocks and FEL for loam and leveling).

Rock-free soil? I always thought rocks WERE soil. They are here, anyway...

JayC

I hear you both. Just dug about 15' of trench to bury my satellite dish feed in conduit and thought I was digging in a rock quarry. Couldn't put the backhoe into the ground more than a few inches in any direction without hitting small, medium or large rocks. I call it hard-pan soil, but don't really know what the correct geological term for it is. Had to put a jog in the pipe to go around that boulder. Decided not to spend time removing it since I didn't have much room to come at it from different directions. I was close to the house and more stone walls not seen in the pic.

 

[andrehoude123]

We just got 300 acres in Northern Quebec we're working on a road about a km long and building a cottage I'm at 50 hours now just messing around up there but lucky for me there lots of sand up there but a couple big stubborn rocks so were going to get a shovel to get them out

 

[Carl_NH]

I hear you both. I call it hard-pan soil, but don't really know what the correct geological term for it is. Had to put a jog in the pipe to go around that boulder. Decided not to spend time removing it since I didn't have much room to come at it from different directions. I was close to the house and more stone walls not seen in the pic.

Chris,

We have a rock farm here on the coast of NH - its formally called "glacial till" in other words the glaciers deposited rock and debris in between the ledge outcroppings.

We have ledge "cliffs" under and above ground combined with filled areas full of rocks and dirt. In the dry summer season very little grows on ledge even 2' underground. So I now know areas to avoid when digging..

To the point my projects have been building over 500' of stone wall, landscaping the neighbors place with over 200 yards of fill, drain tile and loam, then planting 20 trees and shrubs there. Then at our place reclaiming 3 acres of land after stumping, fill and loam then planting many norway spruce, ornamental and other trees and rhodies.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Some nice projects are being shown here. I'd say the biggest single project I did was turn a half mile of logging road that was only passable in dry weather unless you had a very high clearance 4X4 and there were tree branches and brush scraping both doors into a year round driveway with a utility lane. I don't have any before pictures because I didn't have a camera then and would have been to busy to use it anyway. I used my L3010 and a one ton dump truck to do it. This is a section of it now.

 

[Verticaltrx]

Some nice projects are being shown here. I'd say the biggest single project I did was turn a half mile of logging road that was only passable in dry weather unless you had a very high clearance 4X4 and there were tree branches and brush scraping both doors into a year round driveway with a utility lane. I don't have any before pictures because I didn't have a camera then and would have been to busy to use it anyway. I used my L3010 and a one ton dump truck to do it. This is a section of it now.

Looks like quite the transformation. Mind going into a little more detail on the process?

 

[Gordon Gould]

Looks like quite the transformation. Mind going into a little more detail on the process?

Well the road was just dirt and subject to sever mud and rutting in a lot of places during the spring thaw and there were a couple places you would drop right down to the axles. In the spring of 2000 during mud season I started to work on it. I had a rear blade and a logging winch for the tractor. I would get a load of inch and a half stone, about 3.5 ton, on my 4X4 dump truck and back into the road making ruts. Then I would pull out and dump more than enough stone to fill the ruts and repeat until the truck was empty. Then I would try to level things out a little or soup it up more with the rear blade. If I got the truck stuck I would have to dump the load and a couple times use the tractor and winch to get out. Each time I backed in I would go over the previous sections and drive the stone further into the mud both down and laterally. I just kept doing this and straightening it out with the blade until I had passable road the whole half mile in. After things dryed up I started grading and shaping it with the rear blade. Each time making it better and improving the drainage. The next couple of springs I did the same thing with the stone in the spots that needed it. Now it is a hard packed road that stays solid year round. I can still make out the original ruts I filled with stone. In the spring when the UPS guy comes all the way in and I ask him why he doesn't just leave the package by the mailbox on the main road he says "Why, your road is no problem, it's better than a lot of the town roads". Makes me feel good.
As far as trees and brush goes I cut the trees at ground level and skidded them to a log landing with the tractor. Made a firewood pile and several burn piles. I cut the big brush and dragged it into the woods by hand. The small brush I cut with my trail mower and 4 wheeler. At first the road sides grew in briars, milkweed, and goldenrod but changed to grass just by mowing.
Thats what I did 12 years ago - hard for me to believe how much work it was.

Edit: Then there were all the rocks to pull - how could I forget.

 

[Verticaltrx]

...
Thats what I did 12 years ago - hard for me to believe how much work it was.

Thanks for the writeup. There are a lot of big projects from years back I wish I had gotten pictures of. Before digital cameras it was rare that we'd take any pics while working.

 

[bunchgrass]

I agree - a lot of good work being done out there. I don't have the backhoe so my "jobs" pale in comparison but I do put up hay and use a hay grapple to pickup and move 8 or 10 small square hay bales at one time (I have the 3rd function added to my joystick). That sure makes moving hay whole lot easier since help is hard to find. I don't have any pics of moving/stacking - sorry.

But I also used my 8540 to clean up the mess after my shop/barn burned down in May. Thank god I had such a sloppy shop that my tractor wasn't able to fit inside or she would have burned up too - with < 100 hrs on it. As it was, front side of the mirrors melted and the headlight lens covers clouded up. Part of the cleanup was removing concrete that had been the base for my building poles - so 2ft diameter and 4' deep concrete "cylinders" - too much for the Bobcat so Kubota loader with pallet forks to the rescue! Pretty heavy though.

Side note: I accidently bent the rods on my loader bucket cylinders while trying to spread out some still-smoldering hay. Had pallet forks on and was trying to "rake" the pile apart when I caught the ground (I think). That was a $700 repair.