Hey Everybody. Take a look what I finally got behind me here. And now we've got a whole
lot of work to do. Now the first thing I actually did with this was drive around and bush hog
on the yard. Now I know your not supposed to use a bush hog on the yard but, our yard
was severely overgrown, because the lawn mower is broken. So to kinda get used to the simple
start, stop, forward, backward, left, right kind of procedure, I mowed the yard a little
bit with it yesterday. So now that I've got a little bit of a better understanding on
the operation and the safety of the tractor, now I need to get to work. Now the biggest
project that we have waiting for us in terms of necessity is our driveway. Let me show
you the problems we're having. As you can tell, we've got a rock driveway and the ground
is slightly sloped higher on that side than it is toward our driveway end. So when you
see this little rut is because before this grass grew in we had a bit of runoff that
covered up the driveway and now has turned that into a pothole. But that is by far probably
the least of our worries. You can see that there are a series of potholes right here
at the apex of the driveway. This is right where you, either coming up or down, from
the round about that is right in front of the house. And this is just... You know the
only vehicle we have is a mini van. I have a vehicle from my work as well that handles
this driveway a bit better but the poor minivan is just about tired of this.
Now the sad thing is here is that you don't even know what is wrong with this. The sad thing is that probably
about half inch or an inch below all this red dirt is blacktop asphalt. We had some
asphalt delivered to us once because this had just gotten so bad and had it spread out.
This is the bottom of it. What I mean is there's a bit of an up-slope up toward the road and
if I spin you 180, there's the up-slope going up toward the house. And just a rough guessing
from how tall I am and how well I cannot see over that hill, I'm guessing its a good 10
foot rise. So you can understand why we dont just have this filled in with dirt. So anyway,
this is runoff primarily from where the dog is up there. And come down and has completely
enveloped this. Now probably despite all the bumps and bruises, probably the worst actual
part of the driveway, to actually try to navigate is right here. because hidden in that lump
of grass in center screen right between the dirt path on the far right and the gravel
on the left, that patch of grass right in the middle of the screen, thats actually a
little bit of a rut, a ditch. And then on the other side on this grass, I think its
a little more obvious to see the big rut that's there. And we've pretty much taken to straddling
this rut in order to get through. So this is probably the worst part of the driveway
that needs to be repaired right away. But this is what's actually going to be my biggest
challenge. My water meter. Because my water line comes in from the road, and then down
this way, to the driveway, and then almost right down the middle up to the top of the
hill and down the driveway just a little bit more before it takes almost a 90 degree turn
to the back side of the house. I can understand why it was installed that way, as difficult
as it is going to be for me to work with now, because where else would they put it. I mean
this entire area over here is a mess there would have been a whole lot of clearing that
had to be done to make that work. and it was the only other way to get in. So what I am
going to do is practice a little bit on the upside of the driveway here and get used to
the implement and when I am familiar enough with it that I think I can reasonably feel
safe around the water pipe, the I will shut off the water in case a mistake is made,and
proceed to work around the water pipe. And there's actually another section of water
pipe as well that services that hose bib over there. But the good news about it is, I know
exactly where it is. Because there's a rut from where it was actually put in after we
had the driveway installed. And there's a bit of a rut still from where everything settled
afterward. Alright so that is my long explanation of what we're gonna do first with the brand
new tractor. Everybody, well thats going to be it for today on this project, but theres
still a lot that needs to be done. You know when I got the box blade, I was told by a couple
different people that I might eventually want to end up getting just a leveling blade because
a box blade was going to be good to break everything up right now, but in the future
it was going to be easier to maintain this just using a blade. and I can see why. I think
the next time I come out here I am going to remove the tines off the box blade and just
use the box itself and try to get this a little more level. I did put the bucket on float
and drive backwards over all this to try to level it out, but I think I can do a little
better of a job with the box blade if I just take the tines off. So, if you can tell, this
is a lot more level. Now to get it level, I basically had to make the driveway about
twice as high as it was before. but I really dont have too much of a problem with that.
And its certainly not perfectly level but its certainly also doesn't have big ditches
in it anymore where we're gonna bottom out our minivan like we were doing before. Going
toward the house you can kinda see where some of this blacktop that I had told you that
we placed down before has come back up. Not all of it. Again I'm still kinda nervous about
going down too far and snagging the water line, so really Im just more worried about
trying to get it flat on top that go all the way down and losen everything back up. And
as we get toward the top of the hill you kinda see the rivets on the right and left. you
can tell where the new material is that was scraped off the top and pushed off to the
side. This was another one of the big rivines caused by the runoff and everything filled
in pretty well, I mean there certainly is a lot to learn as far as you know, being able
to finesse with the box blade. But overall, I am pretty happy with the way things have
turned out for this time. I think probably the only way to make it look better other
than having a whole lot more hours of skill under my belt with the machine, would be if
I had like a rake that I could put at the end of this. You can see all the grass clods
from where the grass has started growing over, that have now been torn out and if I had a
rake, I think I could better distribute some of the top rock and get rid of all the extra
grass, but unless it takes root again, which we're not scheduled to have rain again for
like the next week, hopefully it will just decompose where it is and get back into the
soil. One thing I also wanted to mention, I am going to come back through here later
and the intention is to add a bit of a ditch right here. You can still see that the entire
ground level is higher on the left than it is on the right to still include the driveway.
So what I would like to do , is right down on the edge of the driveway, put a channel
and you can also see probably that the ground further from me is higher that the ground
closer to me so if I can dig a deeper channel from that side coming this way hopefully I
can run the water off and follow the natural slope of the land the rest of the way, just
stop it from getting onto the driveway and then I'll take it off and ill go behind everything
here and then theres a natural rivine that goes down that way. And just try to direct
the water around the driveway and then down. So, thats another day. So there you are, that
is the first real use of the brand new farm tractor. Happy Jared.