joshuabardwell
Elite Member
I am going to use my box blade and FEL (but mostly the box blade) to recondition an area of my property that, until this week, had pigs on it. The area is sloped, so all of the topsoil has washed down to the bottom as the pigs tilled it up, and there are lots of spots where they have made wallows in the clay. I intend to put the rippers to the deepest setting and rip everything up, then raise the rippers and use the box to grade everything, and possibly pull some of the topsoil back up the hill--although I think that may be a losing battle.
My question is this: One side of the area runs along my main perimeter fence--a three-rail horse fence. I took a pass at that area the other day, just to get the worst of the wallows out, to discourage water from pooling and help it dry out faster so I can finish the work. I made a pass the length of the area, parallel to the fence, and of course the box blade dug in and left a more-or-less level patch about 3" below grade. My concern is that if I keep this up, year after year, I am eventually going to dig away much of the dirt supporting the fence posts. They'll be left on a little berm, if you will. Can you picture it?
I'm not sure the best way to address this. One approach would be to push the dirt back where it came from, but that's just not going to happen. I don't know if a more skilled operator would have more success at this, but any time I move dirt, there always seems to be less of it to put back than I dug out. My current thinking is that maybe I could use the FEL to pile dirt along the fence line, then tilt the box blade so the fence side is higher than the non-fence side and run parallel to the fence. This would leave the dirt near the fence at-grade, and make the transition smoothly to the lower-grade area that is probably going to result when I start mucking around.
Bear in mind that it's not just my mucking about that is going to change the grade. Remember that nearly all of the topsoil has washed down the hill, and restoring the hill to its original grade is outside of my skill level or desire-to-accomplish. Frankly, this is kind of good news, as the hill ended with a rather sudden drop-off of maybe 24", and now that the pigs have had at it, it is more of a gradual slope, with all the topsoil washing down and filling in that drop-off. But I digress...
I wonder if anybody has any input on how to approach this, or whether there is a better way to accomplish this using the tools at my disposal?
Thanks.
My question is this: One side of the area runs along my main perimeter fence--a three-rail horse fence. I took a pass at that area the other day, just to get the worst of the wallows out, to discourage water from pooling and help it dry out faster so I can finish the work. I made a pass the length of the area, parallel to the fence, and of course the box blade dug in and left a more-or-less level patch about 3" below grade. My concern is that if I keep this up, year after year, I am eventually going to dig away much of the dirt supporting the fence posts. They'll be left on a little berm, if you will. Can you picture it?
I'm not sure the best way to address this. One approach would be to push the dirt back where it came from, but that's just not going to happen. I don't know if a more skilled operator would have more success at this, but any time I move dirt, there always seems to be less of it to put back than I dug out. My current thinking is that maybe I could use the FEL to pile dirt along the fence line, then tilt the box blade so the fence side is higher than the non-fence side and run parallel to the fence. This would leave the dirt near the fence at-grade, and make the transition smoothly to the lower-grade area that is probably going to result when I start mucking around.
Bear in mind that it's not just my mucking about that is going to change the grade. Remember that nearly all of the topsoil has washed down the hill, and restoring the hill to its original grade is outside of my skill level or desire-to-accomplish. Frankly, this is kind of good news, as the hill ended with a rather sudden drop-off of maybe 24", and now that the pigs have had at it, it is more of a gradual slope, with all the topsoil washing down and filling in that drop-off. But I digress...
I wonder if anybody has any input on how to approach this, or whether there is a better way to accomplish this using the tools at my disposal?
Thanks.