Cleaning leaves

[Whiskey]

OK,

Let me pull from the collective atachments minds here on TBN.

I have this project every year to do that I hate, cleaning my leave's out of the ditch and being busy this year with mom in a nursing home I didn't get it done during the winter and now it summer and pooring rain and not only my ditches but the rest of the folks on my side of the road are pluged and the water has nowhere to go.

I did see some time ago a post with a fellow TBN'er using a tarp hooked to his FEL to move them, that seems to be a good idea but I'm looking for a way to pile them using the tractor (yes I know it's the lazy mans approach) being I have a tractor now (790/419) and the bucket comes off I was thinking I need to make or buy something that will ease in this project.

I have several leftover chunks of conveyer belting I use for stall matting anywho if I turn it up on it's side and make a "v" with the idea of making it for the loader (pushing)or the 3ph. (pulling) and building the frame out of angle iron. Only one little problem.....my ditch is about 5' deep with sloping sides and it's a little spooky dropping in to it on the tractor well, let me refraze that...I never tryed it on the tractor.

I was trying to help clean the mouth of a culvert last night and was nose down in the ditch with the bucket in dump mode and almost didn't get back out and the pucker factor was BIG.

Another thought is trying to build something to drag from chain while the tractor stay's on the road but I can't come up with a way to keep it straight being the drag will not be behind the tractor but off to the side. I hope I explained this good, I'll try to get some pic's tonight if it's not pooring rain.

Whiskey

 

[bebster]

Looks like no one is offering any help in a while. What if you fastened several metal leaf rakes together and fastened them to the FEL. Then you could drop the FEL over the ditch and back out and hopefully get all the leaves up onto the level ground.

 

[rbarker]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( my ditch is about 5' deep with sloping sides and it's a little spooky dropping in to it on the tractor well, let me refraze that...I never tryed it on the tractor.)</font>

I don't know how feasible this would be, but could you use your loader to dig an access ramp with less angle in order to get into the ditch? Once you got in there you could use all kinds of ideas to move the leaves around. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[Chief]

I would think that finding a way to drain the water from the ditch and let the leaves dry out. Then is is a piece of cake to use a blower to blow them into a pile on a tarp and drag them into a pile. I drag mine to the gardena and just pull the tarp back over and dump them in piles. Mind you, I have a Stihl SR 400 sprayer blower that I use to pile my leaves up. It has LOTS of power. I usually end up with a 50 diameter pile that is about 4 ft. high. Not sure if this is of much help to you but leave are a pain in the neck and that is how I tend to them.