I'm a Maroon

[LoneCowboy]

Turns out my wife is much smarter than I am
I had a laborer (older guy from church, but he works hard) helping me yesterday and we’re cutting out dead trees and branches and dragging them over (thru 2’ high grass, she mows it today) to the chipper (on the tractor) and then chipping them. No big deal right? Except a lot of hard

Well, I get everything cut in like 1.5 hours and my laborer admits he’s pooped out, so I’m helping drag these things over and by the time you get there, I’m just beat, I have to suck wind, etc
I go back to the truck and drink an entire bottle of water in one gulp
Ok, that’s it, I’m wasted
Call the wife
You done with the dentist?
Yeah
Good, come up and help us, we’re beat, we won’t finish til 7pm at this rate.
She shakes her head over the phone and says "ok, I'll be there"
She comes up, looks around and says
Get me the tie downs
The what?
The tie downs, for the ATV
Oh, ok
Go get them for her and look at her strangely and grab another two big branches and go dragging them off a couple hundred feet to the pile.

She takes the tie downs, wraps up a whole bundle and cinches it tight, then she walks over and gets the tractor, drives the tractor back, hooks the other tie down to the tractor and drags the whole bundle over to the pile

DUH
Could have hit me with a hammer
I’m an idiot
Neither one of us thought of that, thank goodness she came.

 

[Youare]

My grandfather use to tell me that laziness was the mother of invention not necessity.

I'm not saying your wife is lazy but that draging all that brush two pieces at a time was looking to be too much work for her to think about doing.

Try to think, how can I use my tractor to do anything.

When moving brush I have laid out a long chain with a slip hook on one end, piled the brush on the chain then attached the chain the the tractor or FEL if you have one.

The other thing that worked well was a set of slip on forks on the loader bucket. I made a decent set out of some small channel iron and a quick and dirty set once out of 2 X 4's.

Randy

 

[deerhunterf350]

You my Friend NEED a GRAPPLE

And Possibly a little vacation , to regroup your thoughts . After reading about the "Issues" you have been having with the New Toy, I can understand the moment you had yesterday.

 

[LoneCowboy]

man, something.
The wife says it's because of her naturally brilliant mind combined with her lazy butt.

It was a total DUH moment, hello, that's what loggers do, why didn't we think of that.
BTW, the chipper was awesome. Would take 6' round Poplars, 30 to 40 feet long and just chewed it up and spit it out.

 

[VABlue]

Well, I guess if a seasoned veteran can boo-boo like that, I shouldn't be too ashamed of not realizing I could use the fel to walk out of front axel deep mud...

 

[3RRL]

Brian,
Good story man. I think we've all had those moments.
Sometimes you need another pair of eyes to view the situation from a different perspective. This is a good thing.
BTW, what kind of chipper?

 

[RedRocker]

My grandfather use to tell me that laziness was the mother of invention not necessity. Randy

Your Grandfather was right, I always seem to find the easy way to do stuff.
Well, most always, I have my maroon moments too.

 

[BamaRob]

You my Friend NEED a GRAPPLE

And Possibly a little vacation , to regroup your thoughts . After reading about the "Issues" you have been having with the New Toy, I can understand the moment you had yesterday.

That's exactly why I got my grapple. I wanted to do in weeks what would take years if I were dragging/piling the brush by hand. I really wish I had a chipper now! It's so dry here I can't burn any of the brush, so I just keep making piles. If I had a chipper, the burn piles would be much smaller, and I'd have lots of (much needed) mulch.

Later,

BR

 

[LoneCowboy]

Brian,

BTW, what kind of chipper?

Wallenstein (something or other, don't remember the number)

takes up to 6" branches and quite well I might add.
just chews them right up, pretty impressive.

 

[jeffinsgf]

That's exactly why I got my grapple. I wanted to do in weeks what would take years if I were dragging/piling the brush by hand. I really wish I had a chipper now! It's so dry here I can't burn any of the brush, so I just keep making piles. If I had a chipper, the burn piles would be much smaller, and I'd have lots of (much needed) mulch.

Later,

BR

Not to disillusion you, but a chipper doesn't exactly solve the problem.

I have a chipper -- a pretty good sized one, albeit manual feed. If you are chipping long, straight pieces, it all goes lickety split. My PTO chipper will disintergrate a 4 inch straight clean oak branch in just a few seconds, but when was the last time you saw a straight clean oak branch? It turns into a fairly sizeable job just cleaning up the slash enough that it will feed. This even happens (to a much lesser extent) to the big hydro feed machines that I rented before I bought mine.

There is also an issue of just how much mulch you can use. I mulch a lot -- under trees, in flower beds, around the foundation plantings -- and I have a mountain of the stuff all the time.

We had a horrible ice storm in January. It'll take me years to clean up all the broken limbs on my 10 acres (over half wooded).

My current program is this: Everything over 2 inches gets cut for firewood. Cedar slash gets chipped. Honey locst slash goes to the burn pile. Hickory slash over 1 inch gets worked into smoker chunks. Sycamore and oak slash, and hickory slash under an inch, is being used in remote corners of the property to create "rabbitats".

The cedars feed into the chipper easier than anything else, and create a nice, insect resistant mulch that lasts a long, long time. It is amazing after three years of watching this, how much longer the cedar chips last compared to mixed hardwoods.

I was complaining to my conservation agent about how big my burn pile was getting with the storm damage, and he suggested the animal habitat brush piles. Just pick a spot out of normal view and build a medium sized brush pile with bigger deadfall at the bottom and the smaller stuff on top. The birds and small mammals will use it for protection from predators.

Of course, if you don't like rabbits -- this idea blows.