Why did you park your tractor upside down in the pond?
Well its a long story.
I have a small piece of land across the lane from my house. It is just over 0.7 acre and is triangular with two long sides, one onto the lane, one onto rough land behind, this side has a drainage ditch.
The previous owner decided he wanted a pond so he had one dug, complete with an island in the middle. He wanted to keep ducks on it "for sport". As they kept flying off he had their wings clipped. Result was the first tiime the pond froze over a fox took out all his ducks. Anyway I digress.
Between the ditch and the pond is about 16 foot wide strip of solid ground, or so I thought. It had got badly overgrown so I took the Yanmar and flail mower over it a month ago to clear a way through. At points there were a few dips but nothing serious. I have even buzzed the quad around it a few times.
I have a load of dried up and crumbling softwood that had been collected for firewood but I burn only hard woods now. So I filled the loader bucket with them and also a load on a pallet picked up on a frame on the rear hitch which has long arms to pick up pallets with. I wanted to dump the lot around the back of the pond to disintegrate. Not a big weight but around the back of the pond the whole lot started tipping towards the edge of the pond. I dropped the loader to try to stop it going any further before getting off and that stopped it at about an angle of 30 degrees with the wheels on the pond side not on firm ground. Stopped the engine of course.
The local framer turned up with a big 4WD tractor but couldn't get it along the earth bank between pond and ditch as it was too risky to try. So we hooked together three truck type lash down straps and tried to pull it out. Of course the bucket dug in and it slowly flipped over into the pond with nothing we could do to stop it.
So it had to be dragged about 50 feet upside down, ploughing up stinky mud and pond flora as it went. Once we got it near the firmer ground we managed to pull it upright and drag it a few yards to where it sat covered with mud and aquatic plants.
Its all good now except for that bent linkage rod, which is an easy fix.
Its hard to describe just how much we seemed to be abusing it to get it to dry land. To see it running well again was a great sight. As you can see in the picture its not a show piece, its had a hard life and has a few little flaws.
This is my second YM186D, the first I had only used for a few months before selling it to fund this one as I needed a loader.
I am so impressed with the work both have done for me that I am buying another at the weekend !
