The last several weeks we've been hard at it to clear the home site of the last few trees before the builder starts excavation of the foundation and starts the home building.
We have created about another three cords of wood from the crooked hardwoods we cut and bucked. The larger straight trees we want to keep for future projects (beams and other decorative features we'd like to have in the home) are to be cut down. The good ones are oak and hickory.
A decent sized oak being felled:
Then skidded out to the landing with a Farmi 351P winch and MF 240 tractor where we buck it and split it (unless we keep it for later milling)
With cold, but dry weather over the weekend it made for ideal conditions to do some tree clearing for the homesite. This will take a number of weekends to complete and we are hoping to have this done before the trees bud. Fortunately we have some labor saving machinery to help make this adventure more productive and quite a bit safer than when we cleared the driveway. Any trees that get hung up in a fall we can put the winch on it and pull it down with relative ease from a distance. When we did the driveway we had to hook up a come-along winch (hand powered) with a rope. The tractor powered winch will easily pull 3-4 logs at a time from the forest up to the skid plate of the winch where I can then latch them and drag them up to the wood shed area where we limb, buck and split them into firewood.
We got around to finally testing the Farmi 351P logging winch Saturday. With autumn around the corner and the impending house clearing that we have planned this winter it was time to set it up, learn its operation and do a test. The first thing we had to do was read the manual! With the various forces involved with operating this sort of machinery there is really is no second chance for an operator that does not follow recommended procedures for its safe operations. In order to run on our Massey tractor we had to size the PTO shaft length to fit our tractor and this required some measurements and cutting of the shaft according to the manufacturer's instructions. It was a rather finicky task trying to connect the PTO onto the Farmi's splined shaft due to the lack of space around Farmi's PTO guard. However with a bit of patience, disassembly of the PTO guard (and then reassembly once installed!) we managed to get it done properly and working safely with all guards correctly in place.
With 34 acres of forest around us, a small scale logging winch/skidder seemed justified since our plan is to selectively harvest timber in the years to come for fuel wood to heat our home and perhaps to sell on spot basis if the economics are right. We had considered the Wallenstein model of winch but instead decided on the Farmi brand (Finnish company) due the ideal mix of performance (log pulling capacity =7,720 lbs), price, reliability and reputation. It is really a solidly built piece of equipment and I imagine that it will far outlast us!
The wood shed is finally done! We ended up going the easy route and used wire fence to be the walls which was easy, cheap and quick to install. The added benefit of this material is that it allows complete air circulation from all directions. Additionally we had reasoned that no one would be able to see the sides and rear wall anyway. So the next thing is to get a few more pallets to stack the wood on, rent a splitter and make an all day event out getting the wood split and stacked.
It was a busy two days as we also took advantage of the dry conditions and had 36 more tons of crusher run delivered to finish up the barn floor leveling. We ran in too a mechanical problem with the hydrostatic steering on the tractor causing us to shut down for awhile to fix the problem (sort of). The steering ram cylinder came loose from vibration (all four bolts were still in place but the cap screws were not engaged!). We managed to get them realigned and properly tightened without cross threading the screws. This fix allowed me to continue using it but now I think there is either a problem with the steering pump pressure or the cylinders are bad. At about the same time this happened Elizabeth had declared that the well pump had quit working or the well was dry! After taking a short break and thinking about the issue I walked over and pressed the circuit breaker button on the generator and it reset. Well pump not broken and well not dry. :)
Ramp nearly level with bottom of door now
Moving and leveling with FEL. The Farmi was only along for the ride to counter weight the front end. I should have put the rear blade on the for additional leveling capability.
Elizabeth was very busy planting tomatoes, zuchini, watermelon and ochra in the hugelkultur beds which we amended with topsoil removed from the wood shed. The farm is coming along nicely!
The cute and adorable little fellow was found in the wood shed when we were excavating the topsoil
