GreenYellow
Silver Member
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2015
- Messages
- 228
- Location
- Texarkana, AR
- Tractor
- 1994 John Deere 670 and 1948 John Deere B
So I was brush hogging at the in-laws yesterday evening. The ground was a little spongy, but not too bad. The wide turf tires on the tractor give a big footprint. I mowed for an hour with no issues whatsoever.
Then...It happened... I found a (hidden) broken sewer pipe. And the tractor took a dive. All 4 wheels at least a foot deep in shi... Sewer. It 'twerent going nowhere.
It was on the northeast corner of the field, about 200' out. I tried to find a route to drive my truck close enough. The ground just wasn't solid enough anywhere. I could NOT risk sinking my 8000lb truck somewhere out there.
After assessing it for a while, I decided the only option was to string together enough strap/chain to get to the nearest telephone pole, at 200'. I had 5 chains and 6 heavy straps in my truck, and it reached with about 2' to spare. After taking 20 minutes to string all that together, I could start actually doing something. I had no winch or come-along with me. The best I had was a trucker ratchet strap. I pulled all the slack out of the line (that I could) and started cranking the ratchet. The phone pole leaned and the tractor stayed. The 4" trucker strap was like a guitar string. I worked some more on the tractor with some logs and managed to spin one underneath one of the back wheels, and that freed some of the load.
((Free sensory detail here: While working to get a log spun under a tire, a golf ball size glob of crap slung up off the tire and splatted on the back of my left ear... and stuck... and ran down my neck. You're welcome. ))
Then it started slowly inching forward with the ratchet. The ratchet couldn't pull the whole load up out of the hole, so I put the tractor in low range 1st gear at an idle and let the wheels spin SUPER slow. This worked well, as I pulled a little slack with the ratchet, the tractor kept the slack pulled. After filling up the ratchet and starting over about 5-6 times I FINALLY got it onto more solid ground where it would float a little. It was soft enough my feet were sinking, but the wide tires were staying up ok. It took some more coaxing, but after a little over an hour, it was out.
Then I spent the next half hour washing the shi... sewer off the tractor (and myself) with the water hose and rolling up 200 feet of chains and straps. I finished the field at 9:45 last night. On the way home at 10, I grabbed supper from a convenient store -- a pizza stick burrito that was cooked around 6:00am that morning.
It was a real thrill... But it was (very strangely) a rewarding experience in one sense. It was a reminder that I CAN SURVIVE. Ingenuity, grit, a little "have to" (and a few tools) can prevail.
Then...It happened... I found a (hidden) broken sewer pipe. And the tractor took a dive. All 4 wheels at least a foot deep in shi... Sewer. It 'twerent going nowhere.
It was on the northeast corner of the field, about 200' out. I tried to find a route to drive my truck close enough. The ground just wasn't solid enough anywhere. I could NOT risk sinking my 8000lb truck somewhere out there.
After assessing it for a while, I decided the only option was to string together enough strap/chain to get to the nearest telephone pole, at 200'. I had 5 chains and 6 heavy straps in my truck, and it reached with about 2' to spare. After taking 20 minutes to string all that together, I could start actually doing something. I had no winch or come-along with me. The best I had was a trucker ratchet strap. I pulled all the slack out of the line (that I could) and started cranking the ratchet. The phone pole leaned and the tractor stayed. The 4" trucker strap was like a guitar string. I worked some more on the tractor with some logs and managed to spin one underneath one of the back wheels, and that freed some of the load.
((Free sensory detail here: While working to get a log spun under a tire, a golf ball size glob of crap slung up off the tire and splatted on the back of my left ear... and stuck... and ran down my neck. You're welcome. ))
Then it started slowly inching forward with the ratchet. The ratchet couldn't pull the whole load up out of the hole, so I put the tractor in low range 1st gear at an idle and let the wheels spin SUPER slow. This worked well, as I pulled a little slack with the ratchet, the tractor kept the slack pulled. After filling up the ratchet and starting over about 5-6 times I FINALLY got it onto more solid ground where it would float a little. It was soft enough my feet were sinking, but the wide tires were staying up ok. It took some more coaxing, but after a little over an hour, it was out.
Then I spent the next half hour washing the shi... sewer off the tractor (and myself) with the water hose and rolling up 200 feet of chains and straps. I finished the field at 9:45 last night. On the way home at 10, I grabbed supper from a convenient store -- a pizza stick burrito that was cooked around 6:00am that morning.
It was a real thrill... But it was (very strangely) a rewarding experience in one sense. It was a reminder that I CAN SURVIVE. Ingenuity, grit, a little "have to" (and a few tools) can prevail.
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