CUT Box Blade Newbie - Road Pictures

[Obed]

Obed, if you have the time to wait for dry weather that will be your best time to grade the road and then put the stone on. .

dirtworksequip,
Yes it makes sense to wait on the gravel until the dry season. I was surprised by how wet the new dirt on the road got. I'm hoping it won't be this soft all winter. In our area, winter is the rainy season. I had an electrician scheduled to install an electric pole and breaker box for our camper today. However, the road was too soft for his truck and trailer. We have had a lot of rain the past week. That was great because the river was high enough that I was able to go canoeing Saturday. (See the attached pictures.) However, the rain is not helping the road situation. I'm hoping that after a few dry days in a row that I can drive my heavy crew cab 2WD dually pickup up and down the road to pack it down. Maybe it won't get so soft then after it rains. Maybe.

Obed

 

[3RRL]

Obed,
Those are cool pictures of that river.
Does your property have riverfront? Looks like good fishing there.
The boxblade purchase made the most sense to me too, not saying anything bad about a back blade though. But it seemed to me that the boxblade would be more useful in a variety of manners and I think I've used it for a lot of that. Maybe someday I'll get a back blade?

3RRL, I enjoyed readying about your road. Fortunately I don't have to worry about the boulders like you do. Yes the hydraulic top link and side tilt cylinders would be wonderful. However, I'm sure I couldn't get the boss to go for it. For some reason she wants a house. We've lived in an RV for 8 of the past 10 years saving our money. We're in our 40's. Now I might get her to go for the hydraulic adjustments if she gets a house out of the bargain! Our property is in a rural area 90 minutes from where I work in the city. We're evaluating the work situation to see when it makes sense to move to the property and build.

Getting your wife to agree to that bargain should be easy. Just tell her how much more productive your tractor work will be with those additions. And also how much better your work will turn out. It will make more time for you to spend with her. That is usually a good line unless she hates your guts.

 

[dirtworksequip]

Obed, great pics. Beautiful river with the big rocks and pines intermingled with the other trees. Peaceful and tranquill spot.

If winter is your wet rainy season, you need to wait til dryer weather or yu wil just make a mess. If the dirt is too wet yu will not be able to compact it with your truck. If you start leaving ruts and slide around its still too wet.

 

[Captinjack]

obed
I have a 1/2 mile dirt road that rises 230 ft. and has been really bad for a long time as I only had limited time to work on it and that was with hand tools!

Got a Kama 55 hp 4wd and a back blade. So far 75 tons of stone have done wonders, but I know it's just a start. The road was so bad that at times, if you went down the hill to leave, you couldn't get back in. Now we can do it in almost all conditions.

Here are a few pictures of my road. This picture is of the first grade that had 2 ft. deep washout filled with bigger stone. I had to economize as I only had so much stone and time and needed to get the most bang for the $



I then graded all the soft leaves and mud until I got down to harder clay.

Then added geotextile cloth and some stone.

The hill has been a terror for the last 25 yrs. that I've owned the place. This first effort with the tractor and how much it helped almost gave me an organism. Ha Ha!

 

[Captinjack]

And ...oh ya. The triaxle could only make it to the bottom of the hill and had to dump his 22 tons of stone on the road necessitating that I had to distribute it immediately. The last of three loads delivered he got stuck and had to dump his load in my neighbors hay field causing a major stink. The neighbors said that a tractor wouldn't pull it out and that we'd have to hire a wrecker. They have 2 ford tractors and wouldn't even try.

I got out the chains and actually pulled him out much to my amazment. I'm totally impressed with tractors and especially with the Chinese Kama 554. It's my first tractor and I'm more impressed with it the longer I run it. Too bad it's 265 miles away from home and I don't get the opportunity to play much. 92 hours so far.

 

[Obed]

Obed,
Those are cool pictures of that river.
Does your property have riverfront? Looks like good fishing there.

Thanks 3RRL. Yes the property borders the river. I've attached a couple more pictures that I took in the fall. We like to be outdoors, love to hike and enjoy the beauty of God's creation. Two years ago when I was living in NC I saw this property posted for sale on the internet through a land company (not a real estate broker). It is located in the small town where I grew up as a farm boy. We were able to purchase it at a reasonable price and feel extremely blessed. We had been looking for something like this for many years without finding anything. All the nice pieces of property were being bought by developers and getting chopped up. Now we're trying to figure out what it would take to move onto the property. The tough part is my occupation tends to require working in the city.

 

[Obed]

obed
I have a 1/2 mile dirt road that rises 230 ft. and has been really bad for a long time as I only had limited time to work on it and that was with hand tools!

Captinjack,
Thanks for the nice pictures. Great work on your road. From the sounds of things, you must have spent a pretty penny to get your road in shape. Your road sounds very similar to the one I need to work on later this year. My road is about 1/2 mile and drops 300 feet. It is the only way to access the river from our property. Unfortunately, most of the 300 ft drop occurs in the first 1000 ft of road and is very steep. The road was not built correctly so water must run down the road and has cut 2 ft deep washouts in it. I can't get my tractor down the road. My goal is to patch (not fix) the road enough so I can get my tractor down it by next winter.

 

[3RRL]

Obed,
That's great the property is in the small town you grew up in.
Were you familiar with it before you bought it? A guys got to go a long way to beat that scenery!

Captainjack,
I sure like your tractor....sounds powerful and majestic.
And that's some beautiful property you have there. I'm comng to deer hunt next year. Sign me up, will ya.

 

[Captinjack]

Rob
I was just looking at the topo map to try to locate your place by using the pictures. Do you come in on South Forks dr?

You'd be welcome to come deer hunting at camp, but it's a long way to come to kill a few deer.

My 75 acres is so far back in that I have to import a tom cat. Ha Ha.

This is a photo of my deer camp looking towards the North

And another in the spring time looking to the south.

I've got about $1k into the stone and geotextile cloth so far and it's made an unbelievable improvement. Next summer, I'll have the road in good enough shape that the trucks may be able to actually come up the road and spread the stone when unloading. What a time saver that'll be. Gotta replace a culvert first though.

 

[3RRL]

Jack,
Beautiful photo of camp ... like a postcard man. Season change is dramatic with all that green. Nice place there. If I brought my Kama, would I need chains to get in? Hahaha
My place, yes, go South on South Fork to Sequoia Oaks and South on Buckhorn. I'm the 27 acres at the end of the culdesac (South and East of it) East border is all BLM!!