Tractor Time

Before I do anything else today, I want to thank everybody who posted messages, made blog comments, or sent me emails wishing Miss Terry a speedy recovery. I’d like to say that she’s feeling much better today, but I would be lying to you. She still has the severe headache and the body aches and pains, and her lymph glands are still sore and swollen, but at least she is not feverish like she had been. We are still waiting for the results of all of the labs and tests they ran on Monday afternoon, and hopefully we’ll know something today.

Our gravel driveway and the gravel road going back to the barn have become very overgrown with grass over the summer. In some places it’s hard to tell where you’re even supposed to be driving because the gravel had become buried under all of the grass growing up through it. I’ve been waiting for a break in the weather to tackle that project, and yesterday was finally the day.

The first thing I did was extend the scarifiers on my Kabuta tractor’s box blade all the way down, and then I spent some time going back and forth up and down the road and the driveway, ripping away a lot of the grass and loosening the gravel underneath.

This is a slow and bumpy process, and I was going no more than two or three miles per hour. But when I was done the driveway was properly prepped for the next step.

I decided to focus on the driveway first, because I knew I didn’t have nearly enough gravel to do everything. Retracting the scarifiers, I then lowered the box blade down so the wide, flat blade across the bottom was making contact and made several passes up and down the driveway. This did two things; it pulled the loosened gravel and grass up, and then once I got most of the grass out I repeated the process in the opposite direction with just the gravel, and it helped to smooth out any small ruts in the driveway.

Then I tackled the pile of gravel that has been sitting since we had the yard regraded, moving it one bucketload at a time up to the driveway, starting at the garage and dumping it. That was another very long process, but by the end of the day the pile was much smaller than when I started.

As you can see, the gravel is just dumped and somewhat spread and not smoothed out yet. I will finish bringing the rest of the gravel up today, and then use the box blade to smooth things out.

I’m sure that someone with more experience than I have on a tractor could have done the job quicker and made it look a lot better than I have, and I’m sure the finished job would also be a lot neater. But I’m learning as I go on, relying on the YouTube College of Tractorology.

I’m definitely going to have to get a lot more gravel delivered before this job is done. When and how much will depend on the weather and our budget. The first priority will be to finish the driveway itself, and then I will concentrate on the barn road.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – Revenge sounds so mean. That’s why I prefer to call it “Returning the favor.”