F.L. Jennings
Bronze Member
Life in the BT era
When we first moved to our wooded land in the Ouachita foothills of west central Arkansas it was in the B.T. era, that is, before tractor. Buying a tractor at that stage of our life was as far fetched as being able to flap my arms and fly to work. Everything was done by hand. Everything. If you couldn't get to it with the pickup then you grunted it out, whatever it was. A wheelbarrow or the truck were the only load haulers. In working on your land it's amazing how many tasks present themselves where you can't use either one to help out. The dozer guy I hired to push our driveway was less than professional to say the least. I had felled all of the trees and moved the wood aside a piece at a time so that he wouldn't have to find a place to stack so much material. I found out later that all of the anti-freeze he bought did not go into the dozer radiator, and he frequently medicated himself against the cold and rampant outbreaks of malaria. As a consequence, all of the stumps he pushed aside had a huge quantity of dirt pushed with them. Perhaps he actually saw twice as many obstacles in his path than really existed. As a result he left large piles of entangled stumps, saplings, cut logs all covered with a more than generous topping of red clay. Our first dwelling was two hundred yards from the small country road, and this was lined with terrible dozer piles.
I cleared many of these by hand, alternately digging, chopping, pulling, shoveling and cussing. Oh, if I'd only had a tractor! My joints and muscles still groan in remembrance of some of those pioneering adventures. (now that I'm older I realize that the words adventure and trouble are completely interchangeable) Now I know why all of the old timers in those ancient tin types were so grim faced. Being young and strong and with meager funds, I did everything by hand. For our septic tank I dug a round hole about 6 feet in diameter and the same depth. The top few inches of the mountain top was a poor topsoil followed by several feet of red clay strewn with crystal and field stone rock. Below that the clay mixed with increasing amounts of shale. Finally the shale turned into blue shale that sent sparks flying from the pick and pry bar. Deep enough I said, "just right". I formed a hexagonal shape with plywood and set welded wire fabric into the bottom and in the space between the soil and the plywood. The hexagonal shape was to take full advantage of material dimensions. I poured (placed) concrete into this form and I had my tank. Influent and effluent lines had already been set. I also cast a hexagonal tank top of concrete. This was made in halves with a pipe vent cast in, so that I could manhandle it into place.
After digging 150 feet or so of field line in the rock hard earth, I shoveled in crushed stone, laid the field lines (concrete sections of 4" pipe about a foot or so in length were the norm in those days, with an eighth or quarter inch space between them). A double layer of 30 lb. felt over the top of the laid pipe, followed by more gravel, more felt over the top layer of the gravel, and finally, shovel the dirt over the whole mess. If I had one dollar for every pick blow and shovel full of those days I would be able to donate my Social Security to charity.
Years later I installed a septic tank for a friend with my Kubota backhoe. I dug the hole, the field lines, laid the pipe and backfilled all in a day and a half. What a change. All of the good ol' days really weren't.
No matter what work it took we were overjoyed to be on our own little piece of ground. We drug our mobile home to the wooded ten acres in our fourth year of marriage, and actually moved out here on our fifth anniversary. I had cleared with a chain saw a spot out in the hardwoods, leaving many stumps. More than once I fell flat on my face over one of those as I went out the front door and into the yard (actually an area of wooden protuberances. All those stumps just sat there pretending not to smile). One hot summer's day is ingrained into my soul. Actually it was branded in by the broiling sun. I was digging out stumps in our "yard". Early morning start makes no difference when you are digging stumps by hand. Like working on a roof it's hot no matter when or how you do it. Armed with post hole diggers, pick, pry bar and chopping ax, I attacked the sniggering remains of the trees I had felled. I would work like nobody's business for fifteen minutes or as long as I could stand it, then stagger with sweat flowing, to the shade to attempt a physical recovery. After sitting and panting for fifteen minutes or so, all the while contemplating the other wooden wisdom teeth in our homestead yard, I would rise and repeat the whole process again. It was a real victory when I dug out the last stump. We had a small yard and I fought for every inch of it.
How nice to have had a tractor or even a mule to help me labor in those wonderful-awful pioneering days. I was the mule then, just as stubborn and just as determined. That's OK though, you need determination and a face set like a flint to make a home in the wooded hills. You feel a real kinship for those old timers when you come in dog tired at night from trying to make a better life for you and your wife. My fatigue was able to reach across the years to shake hands with theirs.
The first tractor I had was an Allis-Chalmers WD45 (I get a hoot when the want ads list an "Alice Chalmers" tractor for sale). I bought it for one thousand dollars which was a real fortune to me. It had a wide front end and that was a real improvement over the old tricycle front end. It was two wheel drive of course, but it was heaven sent to me. I used that old orange tractor to do every task I could adapt it to. An old timer neighbor told me that if I ever got it stuck I could cut two 4" to 6" diameter saplings that were 12"-16" longer than the rear tires were in diameter to help me get unstuck. You just chained one of the poles to each drive tire with an equal amount of wood sticking past the tire at each end and used the digging effect to pull the tractor out. I used this method more than once but you had to use a lot of finesse on the clutch! In ignorance I once placed the chain lashing the pole in place in a bad location. I got unstuck alright, but sheared off the valve stem in the process. Fixing a flat on one of those large beasts is also an act I don't care to repeat!
I built a little sawmill back in the 70's and used old Alice to skid felled logs up the mountain from the river bottom. Some of the Sweet Gums I felled were 30 dbh. Wanting to make as few trips as possible I would skid the longest log that the tractor would handle. It got light on the front end with some of those big logs and you could take a nice bite out of the seat when you popped the front end off the ground coming up through the hollow with a 3000 lb log. I welded 300 lbs of elevator weights on the front end to help, but finally started dragging the bigger logs with the tractor backwards and a skid chain underneath going to the logs and skidding tongs. This was a little slower, but kept the chain pull and center of gravity in a safe zone. When I finally sold old Alice several years later I got the same one thousand dollars I had paid for her.
We live a full quarter of a mile from the little country road now and have dwelt in the rural beauty of the Ouachita foothills for over 36 years. We have a little over thirty acres now, and to us there is no place like the country and no life as fulfilling as a simple life connected to the lands and forests.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this brief jaunt into Our little homesteading foray, with and without the benefit of a tractor. If you have a tractor to help you labor, then get down on your knees and thank God. If you are still waiting to be able to get one, then get down on your knees and ask him for one. Fortunately, there was enough of my back left so that when I bought old "Alice" I could still climb up into the seat and really use it! I often get out and just take a cruise around the place just to look over the troubles - errr adventures of the past. My guess is that you do the same thing.
The lower postion of our driveway. We are now one quarter mile from the road after moving farther back in the woods.
This is Martha's field as I 've dubbed it that was whacked out of the woods along our lower drive.
When we first moved to our wooded land in the Ouachita foothills of west central Arkansas it was in the B.T. era, that is, before tractor. Buying a tractor at that stage of our life was as far fetched as being able to flap my arms and fly to work. Everything was done by hand. Everything. If you couldn't get to it with the pickup then you grunted it out, whatever it was. A wheelbarrow or the truck were the only load haulers. In working on your land it's amazing how many tasks present themselves where you can't use either one to help out. The dozer guy I hired to push our driveway was less than professional to say the least. I had felled all of the trees and moved the wood aside a piece at a time so that he wouldn't have to find a place to stack so much material. I found out later that all of the anti-freeze he bought did not go into the dozer radiator, and he frequently medicated himself against the cold and rampant outbreaks of malaria. As a consequence, all of the stumps he pushed aside had a huge quantity of dirt pushed with them. Perhaps he actually saw twice as many obstacles in his path than really existed. As a result he left large piles of entangled stumps, saplings, cut logs all covered with a more than generous topping of red clay. Our first dwelling was two hundred yards from the small country road, and this was lined with terrible dozer piles.
I cleared many of these by hand, alternately digging, chopping, pulling, shoveling and cussing. Oh, if I'd only had a tractor! My joints and muscles still groan in remembrance of some of those pioneering adventures. (now that I'm older I realize that the words adventure and trouble are completely interchangeable) Now I know why all of the old timers in those ancient tin types were so grim faced. Being young and strong and with meager funds, I did everything by hand. For our septic tank I dug a round hole about 6 feet in diameter and the same depth. The top few inches of the mountain top was a poor topsoil followed by several feet of red clay strewn with crystal and field stone rock. Below that the clay mixed with increasing amounts of shale. Finally the shale turned into blue shale that sent sparks flying from the pick and pry bar. Deep enough I said, "just right". I formed a hexagonal shape with plywood and set welded wire fabric into the bottom and in the space between the soil and the plywood. The hexagonal shape was to take full advantage of material dimensions. I poured (placed) concrete into this form and I had my tank. Influent and effluent lines had already been set. I also cast a hexagonal tank top of concrete. This was made in halves with a pipe vent cast in, so that I could manhandle it into place.
After digging 150 feet or so of field line in the rock hard earth, I shoveled in crushed stone, laid the field lines (concrete sections of 4" pipe about a foot or so in length were the norm in those days, with an eighth or quarter inch space between them). A double layer of 30 lb. felt over the top of the laid pipe, followed by more gravel, more felt over the top layer of the gravel, and finally, shovel the dirt over the whole mess. If I had one dollar for every pick blow and shovel full of those days I would be able to donate my Social Security to charity.
Years later I installed a septic tank for a friend with my Kubota backhoe. I dug the hole, the field lines, laid the pipe and backfilled all in a day and a half. What a change. All of the good ol' days really weren't.
No matter what work it took we were overjoyed to be on our own little piece of ground. We drug our mobile home to the wooded ten acres in our fourth year of marriage, and actually moved out here on our fifth anniversary. I had cleared with a chain saw a spot out in the hardwoods, leaving many stumps. More than once I fell flat on my face over one of those as I went out the front door and into the yard (actually an area of wooden protuberances. All those stumps just sat there pretending not to smile). One hot summer's day is ingrained into my soul. Actually it was branded in by the broiling sun. I was digging out stumps in our "yard". Early morning start makes no difference when you are digging stumps by hand. Like working on a roof it's hot no matter when or how you do it. Armed with post hole diggers, pick, pry bar and chopping ax, I attacked the sniggering remains of the trees I had felled. I would work like nobody's business for fifteen minutes or as long as I could stand it, then stagger with sweat flowing, to the shade to attempt a physical recovery. After sitting and panting for fifteen minutes or so, all the while contemplating the other wooden wisdom teeth in our homestead yard, I would rise and repeat the whole process again. It was a real victory when I dug out the last stump. We had a small yard and I fought for every inch of it.
How nice to have had a tractor or even a mule to help me labor in those wonderful-awful pioneering days. I was the mule then, just as stubborn and just as determined. That's OK though, you need determination and a face set like a flint to make a home in the wooded hills. You feel a real kinship for those old timers when you come in dog tired at night from trying to make a better life for you and your wife. My fatigue was able to reach across the years to shake hands with theirs.
The first tractor I had was an Allis-Chalmers WD45 (I get a hoot when the want ads list an "Alice Chalmers" tractor for sale). I bought it for one thousand dollars which was a real fortune to me. It had a wide front end and that was a real improvement over the old tricycle front end. It was two wheel drive of course, but it was heaven sent to me. I used that old orange tractor to do every task I could adapt it to. An old timer neighbor told me that if I ever got it stuck I could cut two 4" to 6" diameter saplings that were 12"-16" longer than the rear tires were in diameter to help me get unstuck. You just chained one of the poles to each drive tire with an equal amount of wood sticking past the tire at each end and used the digging effect to pull the tractor out. I used this method more than once but you had to use a lot of finesse on the clutch! In ignorance I once placed the chain lashing the pole in place in a bad location. I got unstuck alright, but sheared off the valve stem in the process. Fixing a flat on one of those large beasts is also an act I don't care to repeat!
I built a little sawmill back in the 70's and used old Alice to skid felled logs up the mountain from the river bottom. Some of the Sweet Gums I felled were 30 dbh. Wanting to make as few trips as possible I would skid the longest log that the tractor would handle. It got light on the front end with some of those big logs and you could take a nice bite out of the seat when you popped the front end off the ground coming up through the hollow with a 3000 lb log. I welded 300 lbs of elevator weights on the front end to help, but finally started dragging the bigger logs with the tractor backwards and a skid chain underneath going to the logs and skidding tongs. This was a little slower, but kept the chain pull and center of gravity in a safe zone. When I finally sold old Alice several years later I got the same one thousand dollars I had paid for her.
We live a full quarter of a mile from the little country road now and have dwelt in the rural beauty of the Ouachita foothills for over 36 years. We have a little over thirty acres now, and to us there is no place like the country and no life as fulfilling as a simple life connected to the lands and forests.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this brief jaunt into Our little homesteading foray, with and without the benefit of a tractor. If you have a tractor to help you labor, then get down on your knees and thank God. If you are still waiting to be able to get one, then get down on your knees and ask him for one. Fortunately, there was enough of my back left so that when I bought old "Alice" I could still climb up into the seat and really use it! I often get out and just take a cruise around the place just to look over the troubles - errr adventures of the past. My guess is that you do the same thing.
The lower postion of our driveway. We are now one quarter mile from the road after moving farther back in the woods.
This is Martha's field as I 've dubbed it that was whacked out of the woods along our lower drive.
