Post your Branson at work. Picture thread

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I've been tempted to put an electric winch on mine, but the hand crank works ok and does not require adding a second battery to the UTV. Much of the time I'm shovelling chips out anyhow.

Mine is similar to the DR but had a few features I liked better and I thought it would be made better (DR has a pretty poor reputation).

Piled high with chips it's got about as much weight as I should be pulling with the UTV. I did once load it with wood down at the bottom of my property and drive up to where I process firewood and the UTV was really unhappy about pulling it up the slope.

The DR's bed is apparently 20ga, WM just said (on chat, ymmv) that theirs is 16ga.
I'd be pulling with the tractor; ideally I could pull it to a pile, disconnect it, I guess chock the wheels as it has no brakes, load it with a bunch of tractor buckets, reconnect, pull it elsewhere, dump, repeat. Would definitely be faster than moving one bucket of chips across the land at a time.
Do I really need it? Probably not. But it would certainly be useful in a number of ways...

 

[YanmarFever]

Nothing beats those back yard deer hunters....
212 lbs

 

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Sunday my wife and I attacked a very thick patch of scotch broom on our land.

Just the other day I saw a post that mentioned an article showing using a section of pipe to make a chain cinch without a slip hook, and that article mentioned that the pipe helps grasp shrubs to pull.

So I went to my scrap pile and found this funky aluminum thing that just fits a 5/16 chain hook and figured I'd give it a try. I tried to cut the rectangular tube piece off but apparently I don't have any proper cutoff wheels and figured for a proof of concept it didn't matter.

The verdict: it's a game changer for pulling smaller brush!

Usually I wrap a chain 2-3 times around a trunk and then close off with the slip hook, and that works fine - as long as the trunk is an inch or greater. Smaller and the chain doesn't close well on the shrub and it just pulls right off.

With the pipe section, you put the chain with the hook through the pipe, chain goes around the trunk, then back through the pipe and then hook onto the pipe. Snug it manually then pull up with the FEL. Almost every shrub came right out; the occasional one broke off.

I was manually pulling any that would come easily enough as the soil conditions are perfect for it and manually pulling is still faster than the pipe, but there were still tons that needed the tractor - it was really dense.

As it turns out that rectangular block on the pipe section was very useful - both as a visual "oh there it is!" and also to make it easier to hold on to with gloves on. I won't be cutting it off in the future.

I got my wife in on the game too - her first time operating the tractor, finally; she mostly made the FEL go up/down to pull the shrubs (with a few accidental bucket curls interspersed lol) while I worked at pulling and setting the chain, and she also moved the tractor here and there as we completed what was reachable by the chain without moving.

We pulled three overflowing buckets worth of broom; I burned it all yesterday - it's ridiculous how flammable that stuff is even green!

 

[ericm979]

That looks like a good trick for pulling brush. Better than the spring loaded jaws thing I bought that slips off the brush half the time.

That looks like spanish broom. I think it's the worst of the three brooms for flammability but at least it grows slower than the other two. Also isn't that the power like ROW? And isn't the power company supposed to keep it clear? I guess they and their contractors are as bad on your side of the state as on mine.

 

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That looks like a good trick for pulling brush. Better than the spring loaded jaws thing I bought that slips off the brush half the time.

That looks like spanish broom. I think it's the worst of the three brooms for flammability but at least it grows slower than the other two. Also isn't that the power like ROW? And isn't the power company supposed to keep it clear? I guess they and their contractors are as bad on your side of the state as on mine.

We have a variety of brooms here; when I look for images for "scotch broom" it's a very good match and everyone (including the local conservation group) calls it that, but if you can tell the difference I won't argue I don't know about slow growth, it definitely invades all over the place here. I think one of my neighbors kind of likes the stuff in his meadow - I mowed a spot for him where a guy puts bees out and I offered to pull some of the worst of the broom in the meadow and he just shrugged his shoulders...

I also looked that the jaw thing and had doubts. Also saw their spiky chain thing and it looked decent but I just knew I'd use it on the the wrong thing and break the chain at some point. I'm definitely impressed with this thing. If you have a bit of pipe, give it a shot. I think like me you'll end up appreciating having a bit more to hold onto it as well though it doesn't need to be as big and clunky as my rectangular tubing. I've used a root jack / weed wrench and those definitely work well but the effort of carrying the thing around makes it mostly useful in dense areas IMO.

I've seen people recommend only pulling broom up to 1/2" thick because the soil disturbance increases spawn rates but I find that if you just cut it off, it'll be back the next year on the same root but be impossible to pull at that point even if you wanted to. I can see the point of cutting if you're in a remote area where you're trying to be one-and-done but I'm clearing my land and I regularly walk around and yank the little stuff by hand, so if there's ten that spawn the next couple years because of a pull, it's easy enough to deal with.

Yes that's the ROW. I'm surprised they don't seem to care about that pole, the one that's right by my gate they blast with a trimmer down to bare dirt pretty regularly. I literally cut a couple small trees down in the ROW to get there... they have gotten good at taking out trees that have at least a 0.3% chance of falling on the lines at least though I've called them out on some ridiculous choices like one tree literally growing away from the lines, enough is enough (I'm totally on board with them taking out real dangers mind you; they have the right to keep the ROW clear, but if there's a tree not in the ROW, I'm pretty sure they actually have to have your permission to cut it - I got a few thousand dollars' worth of tree work done for free when they took out a dying oak that theoretically kinda sorta maybe would've thrown a branch into the wires in some hypothetical never-happens-here cyclone so I can't really argue).

 

[ericm979]

When I took dendrology (tree taxonomy) in college in the '80s we were told they are all scotch broom. I thought the leafless variety was just growing under different conditions. My wife's gotten super into gardening and native plants and told me a few years ago that they're actually not only different species but different genuses. Maybe they were considered the same back then but have since been split off. Or we had it wrong then.

Here's a paper that describes them with some pics: https://ucanr.edu/sites/Rangelands/files/305143.pdf

also that paper's the first I heard about Portugese broom!

BTW the whole idea of species etc is an imperfect map that humans put on top of the world to try to understand it. The plants and animals are going to do what they want.

 

[Zork]

Subscribed, can't find picture to post

 

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A couple days ago I filled in an area to make it at least slightly passable by my tractor.
This whole area to the right of the fence is rocky and slopes down to the right; the fresh fill had a drop of about three feet from the left to right which coupled with the lumpy ground made it basically a no-go with the tractor.

It's definitely not pretty, nor is it particularly smooth. I have a turn-around loop down by my barn (in the direction the tractor is pointing) which I cut a bit more from the side, making it just slightly easier for my long bed crew cab truck to negotiate the loop without having to back up if I missed the turn-in by a foot; this is what we call "Nevada County Red Dirt" - lots of clay with a hint of sand in it. Probably almost perfect for cob, idk.

The conditions for doing this were perfect - the backhoe scraped it nicely off of the hill without clogging the bucket and it wasn't so wet as to be super heavy for a full bucket, and it still had enough moisture to pack down marvelously. Every bucket that I dumped I packed as best I could, then got another bucket, packed, etc... I was very pleasantly surprised that driving over it, the tractor was very stable. I definitely kept the bucket down low and had my seat belt on during the entire operation!

My two main concerns are that my maneuverability was super limited so I wasn't able to get the very middle of the lane packed, and it's not smooth and nicely sloped for water run-off so it'll likely pool. There's a bit of a slope to the right as it is; I figured I'd let it be a few weeks and then possibly dump more on it.

Still, my main need for this passage is only slight - I'll likely only have the tractor go through there spring through fall maybe ten times total when my wife needs more soil to top off garden beds or maybe if I finally get around to excavating a small pond next to the garden space up there; I have an access to our driveway at the bottom of this area and this passage provided an access to my barn road at the top, so it just provides more transit options.

 

[Zork]

A couple days ago I filled in an area to make it at least slightly passable by my tractor.
This whole area to the right of the fence is rocky and slopes down to the right; the fresh fill had a drop of about three feet from the left to right which coupled with the lumpy ground made it basically a no-go with the tractor.

It's definitely not pretty, nor is it particularly smooth. I have a turn-around loop down by my barn (in the direction the tractor is pointing) which I cut a bit more from the side, making it just slightly easier for my long bed crew cab truck to negotiate the loop without having to back up if I missed the turn-in by a foot; this is what we call "Nevada County Red Dirt" - lots of clay with a hint of sand in it. Probably almost perfect for cob, idk.
View attachment 853299
The conditions for doing this were perfect - the backhoe scraped it nicely off of the hill without clogging the bucket and it wasn't so wet as to be super heavy for a full bucket, and it still had enough moisture to pack down marvelously. Every bucket that I dumped I packed as best I could, then got another bucket, packed, etc... I was very pleasantly surprised that driving over it, the tractor was very stable. I definitely kept the bucket down low and had my seat belt on during the entire operation!

My two main concerns are that my maneuverability was super limited so I wasn't able to get the very middle of the lane packed, and it's not smooth and nicely sloped for water run-off so it'll likely pool. There's a bit of a slope to the right as it is; I figured I'd let it be a few weeks and then possibly dump more on it.

Still, my main need for this passage is only slight - I'll likely only have the tractor go through there spring through fall maybe ten times total when my wife needs more soil to top off garden beds or maybe if I finally get around to excavating a small pond next to the garden space up there; I have an access to our driveway at the bottom of this area and this passage provided an access to my barn road at the top, so it just provides more transit options.

Nice job! "...maneuverability was super limited so I wasn't able to get the very middle of the lane packed..." This is where back-dragging your bucket with down pressure works well (bucket flat and front tires off the ground) and turning the tractor with the rear brakes (requires flipping the tandem flange up for independent braking use)

 

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Nice job! "...maneuverability was super limited so I wasn't able to get the very middle of the lane packed..." This is where back-dragging your bucket with down pressure works well (bucket flat and front tires off the ground) and turning the tractor with the rear brakes (requires flipping the tandem flange up for independent braking use)

I did use the bucket this way and got it packed enough for walking, but I doubt it would hold the tractor directly there. I figure it'll settle more there over time and this will be a long term occasional project to smooth a little, spread a little, compact a little... once rains stop and it dries just a little bit I may use my back blade to smooth it out a bit more too, we'll see. As I said it's not an everyday use road, so being a bit lumpy is ok as long as the tractor doesn't tip over when I drive on it; I don't mind having to spend 15 seconds navigating that spot

I definitely used the independent rear brakes during this as the front of the tractor really wanted to just swing downhill - the clay wasn't gloppy but it was slightly slippery under pressure; being able to control the direction from the back of the tractor made all the difference.