Day 505 - Reviving the Wood Chipper & Gathering Greens for Next Year's Compost

PPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill or one of many fully hydraulic options, go to timberking.com. [Music] The weather weather is great. Weather's fantastic. It's 1:25 in the afternoon and I'm just now like really getting outside for the first time today. I spent most of the morning on the computer editing and whatnot. And computers a necessary evil. I have completely broken my addiction to the cell phone. Cell phone stays up on a shelf. It's in my pocket maybe on average five minutes a day. You know, my cell phone addiction has been broken. Wonderful. The computer on the other hand, man, I'm so easily distracted. I'll get on there for editing and you're one or two clicks away from anything on the internet and there's unlimited supply of distractions and I I spend too much time on the computer. Is that a breeze? Oh, that's a breeze. 79 degrees for the high today and a breeze. Man, I don't know what to do with I don't know what to do with myself today. Actually, I know exactly what I need to do. Hopefully, the wind's not too bad. I need to unload the trailer from uh Nathan's trip. I went over to my friend Nathan's house and helped him out a little bit. So, I need to unload this and get the lane shark installed so I can get to cutting some greens for the compost. Remember that whole marketing campaign, if it fits, it ships? Well, it fits and therefore it ships. So, I don't have a tremendous amount of rigging on here. I've got the I've got the jaw clamped onto the front rail. I've got the parking brake set. I've got one huge ratchet strap from the frame to the frame. And there's literally no wiggle room. Like literally no wiggle room. So, h don't hate on me for the lack of rigging. It just doesn't have any room to wiggle. Now, if I get into a wreck, there'd be a different situation, but when this is loaded up like this, I drive like a granny. This is another something or other that I have to address today. This is a lawnmower that I bought in 2014 for our first house. And I thrashed this thing early on. I didn't do hardly any maintenance to this thing like I should. Um I have not been a good owner of this particular engine, this particular piece of equipment until uh you know, past couple years. But it's durable, man. This thing never fails to start. Um, and it's Tyler K's first tractor. I took the deck off it because there's all kinds of all kinds of problems wrong with the deck. And it's Tyler K's first tractor. Well, the steering assembly, the whole steering kit that lasted, the original one lasted from 2014 to about 2023, so 9 years before the steering finally went out on it. And I did some steering upgrades when I replaced it. I replaced all the components. uh the shaft, there's two bushings if I'm not mistaken, and then the gears down below, and the new uh mating side of that gear for the whole steering assembly. And then also to reduce the amount of stress on that while we're steering, uh I added some I forget the name of the bushings, name of the bearings, but I added some bearings down in here cuz it wasn't there was no bearings to begin with. It's just a grease fitting and uh just grease on a shaft. Uh but anyway, I added bearings and then that is like the the power steering mod for these. I saw it on online. Uh you do that and makes steering incredibly easy. So I'm like, "Okay, I'll have incredibly easy steering on the new components and they'll last forever." They didn't last hardly long at all. Maybe a year. Um and yeah, so the steering is completely shot. I can't steer this thing right now. So, one of these days I'm going to get around to changing out the steering once again, probably with OEM parts instead of cheap Amazon parts. Get some new tires on here. The engine is fine. The rear end is fine. It It moves if you if you only if you could only steer it, it moves just fine. Um, but this is not a priority. So, I need to find a place to park it and tarp it definitely over the winter. not a priority at all because uh this was Tyler K's first tractor and now she has a four-wheeler. Jamie has the mule and I have my big bear four-wheeler and we have the Jeep. So, we've got options. This is not a priority, but it's in my way. So, sometimes I feel like I'm getting more organized. Other times I feel like I'm just taking this problem and putting it over there. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. [Music] The tongue jack on this trailer is bent quite a bit. That's because one of the many trips it took us to move all of our all of our remaining belongings from our last property to our storage location. Um, on one of those trips, the trailer jumped off the ball on my truck crossing a bridge and I drugg with the safety chains on the uh trailer jack right there for quite a while and bent it. Uh, so it's not functioning obviously. That's why I'm using this farm jack. And really to replace it, it's not that big of a job. I'd have to cut the welds uh cut the welds right here and right here. And you can get these pieces of C channel already pre-cut with the typical angle here and the hole in the middle for the jack. And then of course an inexpensive jack. You can get the whole setup for probably less than 100 bucks. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to replace it someday. You know, when it comes to pets, I am not a cat person. I would never get a cat if I was out on my own. I would never get a cat if it was up to me. But we got some pretty cool cats. This little dude, Ray, he's like my buddy. I've never had a cat just come up to me and love on me for no reason. You're a good boy, Mr. Ray. Just uh be careful with the other cats inside cuz they whoop your booty. Speaking of inside, I've got the Jeep parked inside. Uh, the other day I took the doors off and drove to town with Tyler K and she thought that was just awesome driving with the doors off. We haven't taken the whole roof off yet, but doors off, drive to town. She thought it was great. Last night she said, "Daddy, can you park the Jeep back in the shop with the doors off so I can play in it? Play school bus driver, I think, is what she said." And I use it as a fort. And I thought, you know what? That there's no problem in that. There's very little work to get that done and it means the world to a kid. You know what I'm saying? That's that's no problem. So, she's in she's playing in that play for it. Uh, but it gets parked over here in this corner. This little organization is starting to to be really nice. Jeep gets parked in the corner. My truck next to it. This spot stays open for the daily driver. Mama's vehicle. If the Leanto is cluttered, she can park it under there or over there rather. But if rain is in the forecast, we make sure that the leanto is not cluttered. So she can park under there and not have to worry about rain. This is where I'm going to keep my three-point implements. I think the rear grater blade, box blade goes right there. It's on the tractor now. Uh the muler, stump grinder, and chipper all fit nice and neat right there. They don't interfere with the natural curve of the driveway coming in. That's great. But that's not enough space for all of the front end or the loader implements as well. So, unfortunately, I think I do have to commandeer some of this space that we cleaned up for just the loader implements. And this is where I had gravel dumped in a pile as I was picking it out and putting it where I needed to. So, there's already just a little bit of gravel right here to begin with. So, it's okay. But definitely staying to the left of the water hydrant right there. I do not want to clutter this up. There's going to be four implements here max. Actually, three at any given time because I don't run the tractor without a front end uh without a uh loader implement installed. So, pallet forks, bucket, and then the lane shark there. And then probably I'll build a saworse or maybe even put a log right here. Something to grab a hold of on the grapple as I remove the grapple. So, we'll have these four right here. And I'd like to get a tarp put down or something eventually to kill all this vegetation. No chemicals, but just knock that back so it's easier to hook stuff up. All right. Um, yeah, that being said, I need to dump the grapple over here and get the lane shark. I've still not gotten around to what I've set out to do today, but I have been filling up this tire for over a year now on a routine basis. I've sprayed the entire tire with soapy water three times now and I've yet to find any bubbles. I just aired this up. It got quiet and I hear it. I hear the leak down here. I'm on it. Finally. You hear it? [Applause] It's down here somewhere. [Applause] It's somewhere right here. I got to get something to mark the tire before I got to get something to mark the tire before I spin this around to get access to it. Okay, it's right there. Isn't that right, Grace? Right there. It's right there, Grace. Right there. Yeah. There it is. There's my leak. I've been looking for this for so long. It's intermittent. So depending on which direction you or which orientation you the tire is when you park it, sometimes it doesn't leak. You know, sometimes I can go like a week without adding any air. Other times about 4 hours later I have to add air. It just depends on which where I park it. One probably one of the reasons why it been so hard to find this little bugger. All right. Now to uh let all that air back out that I just put in so I can plug it. It's like what this this is not rocket science. You just spray soapy water on a tire and it'll bubble where the leak is. Why is there no no bubbles? I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it. And by chance, by happen stance, the hole was pointing down into the dirt as I'm airing it up. And it's super quiet when I took the air truck off, and I still heard air moving. Aha. Hopefully that fixes it. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. If you've never seen one of these before, this is a Lane Shark. Specifically, this is the Lane Shark LS3. It is an articulating rotary cutter that has a hydraulic motor for the front loader of a tractor. There's a couple other things that your tractor must be equipped with in order for this to work. First is a third function kit. Third function gives you hydraulic hookups up here. And these two on this side is the third function kit I have on my tractor. It's a WRON third function kit. The extra one over here is the addition to this third function. This is the continuous flow or C flow upgrade to the third function kit. What this does is it allows an onoff, right? Or vice versa. On off, on off, a flow in this direction, flow in that direction with a button. There's no uh, you know, there's no incremental movements like the loader where it goes, you know, 5%, 10%, 50%, 100%. You can't adjust the flow uh like you can with the loader. It's simply flow through here or flow through there. And that opens or closes my grapple. That's what I typically use. Well, that's what I use for the grapple. It's either all open, all closed. There's no there's no uh intermediate flow rate, which I wish that that's what my third function could have. Topic for another day. This continuous flow upgrade is necessary to have a continuous flow through this hydraulic motor. So this is articulating. It can go in many different orientations also vertically. That's how it's typically used. You cut it vertically. Actually, it should rotate this way. It'll rotate that direction. So the blades are facing that way. and the rest of the deck shields the person who's actually on the tractor. Uh, that's how I would typically use it and that's what the main selling point is for this lane shark. Lane shark, right? You want to clean the edges of your shooting lanes if you have like a hunting property or maybe you have like I have a bunch of trails and you want to clean the lane of the trail so all this extra growth that comes down doesn't block the path and eventually take over uh take over the the traffic area. So, this thing can go in many different orientations. There's a bunch of holes right here. I'm going to flip you around upside down. bunch of holes right there that this pin goes through to lock in and angle this way. Now, keep in mind, you're you're angling this way, but you also have the factory loader controls on the bucket to rotate this way, as well as adjust your elevation. So, you have a tremendous amount of opportunity to reach different areas with this particular setup. And also, it's a rotary cutter, so you can have it right in the front if you want to do rotary cutting uh with it right in front of you. Dogs need to go up for this. That's an obvious. There are two blades on here. Tells you your rotation. The The thing that's different about this style of rotary cutter than like a pole behind is the blades are not 100% closed into the shell of the machine. You see it's sticking out a little bit, right? That's because in the vertical orientation, you want to be able for the blades to be sticking out so that they impact the trees branches that are sticking out before this does. Right? So, this is kind of sort of a typical rotary cutter, but kind of sort of nothing like a typical rotary cutter. Also, uh it's worth noting that you should not hook up the hoses until you get this thing into position because it can go in all kinds of crazy different directions. And if you hook it up first, you may end up bending a line or or pinching a line or breaking one of the fittings as you articulate it into place. So, get it the way you want to way you want it, then hook it up to the hydraulics. All right, I am Well, I was about to say I'm ready to go make some cuts, but do you want me to throw that, Grace? That's a big stick hand. Stick hand. I know it's too big. He just drug it over here. Let's see what we can do with this thing. You ready? Figure it out, Grace. That's a little too big, girl. That's a little too big. A little too big. We'll play some other time. Okay. We'll play in just a little while again. [Music] All right, here's a couple Captain Obvious statements for you. Uh, so yes, a PTO driven rotary cutter is wider and can cut more grass faster. Yes, a PTO driven rotary cutter will have a rear wheel that well, it greatly helps prevent scalping. You know, it's it's it's going to reduce the need for the operator to continuously adjust the elevation, especially over stuff like this where there's just a bunch of bumps and dips. Yes, I should really get a PTO driven rotary cutter, but with our long-term goals in mind, if I can delay that expense for another year, well, we can use those funds toward any other expense that is more impactful immediately than simply cutting grass. So, why am I trying to cut a bunch of grass with this lane shark instead of attempting to borrow a rotary cutter like I did last year if I know I'm not going to buy one this year? Well, my goal for today was not necessarily to cut grass. My two goals were to cut enough greens for Jamie to use in the compost, which I did, and to test out the offset mowing position to see if it would be worth it to run this up front with a rotary cutter and back next year. To be honest, I'm not sure how much I'll be using it in this orientation going forward. And that's due to the loader bouncing in front of the tractor and magnifying every little bump and dip that the front tires hit. It's just too finicky to utilize in this way often, especially on this property. The Lane Shark shines when it's vertical, and I'll mostly stick to using it in that regard. But for today, it is a tool that I have to complete the task, and that's just what I did with it. You ever been to Walmart or any other parking lot and then somebody in a bigger vehicle pulls over the white line into your parking spot? kind of feel like that right now. J knocked all this down yesterday with the lane shark rotary cutter thing and I'm going to try my best to rake it up and let this be the drains for the compost we started. So, we'll see how that goes. I think I might can get more over there than I can fighting this long stuff. All right. So, got some greens here. Now, in the grand scheme of things, not much. I think I'm going to go that direction now, though. A lot of this was really tall um thick stem stuff with a bunch of vines and whatnot. Wasn't the easy to wasn't the easiest to pick up. So, maybe down that way it' be more grass. And then once I get a layer all the way down it, I'll hose it down a little bit. So, I didn't get a complete load here, but it's not much easier than it was um on that first location. So, I'm going to drive up a little bit and see if there's more true grass clippings up there. See if that makes it easier. He might have hit it, but even so, it's kind of standing up straightish. Put that up front. It's rusty a little bit. That's the only thing bad about stuff like this. They rust so quickly, right? Oh well. And the spiders, I guess we'll take them with us, too. So, that just looks like grass, right? It looks like it eats come up easier. This way, some of the thicker stuff, it's not very easy to get up with a pitchfork and wants to get hung on things. But I think we got more grass. Let's see what happens. I'm glad he did this for two reasons. A, I want the green for that compost. I'm really hopeful with that be better next year. I enjoying in the garden this year. So hopefully next year it's better with the appropriate or closer to appropriate soil. I'm not going to say it's going to be perfect. And then also makes the place look better. Like I'm looking around. This is nice. Looks cleaned up a bit. Sometimes I think we look a little trashy for lack of a better lack of a better word with all of our stuff all around and stuff growing up. But it's time. It's not that we wanted to look like this. It's just time. And then things need a home. I know when we lived in Mat and even startle before everything had a home. Like you just put stuff up in the house that had a home. Anybody can come in at any point in time and it looks nice. Not so much here. There's a lot that doesn't have a home. And hopefully what little bit we do do to make things look better, we're able to maintain it. Yeah. Some of this grass just like up there just got pushed down. Just hold on. Hey, I know that he doesn't have the appropriate tools, but we're thankful for what we got. I love this. I don't know if you can see, but the hair standing up looking down the driveway makes me proud. That's their job. Tell straight out. Grace is in the front. She's always in the front. She's the leader here. Not only the muscle, but she's the leader. All right, back to work. Are you done? Okay. Well, you need to find another pencil. There's two segments of pencils sitting on um the table in your room. And then if those won't work for whatever reason, I have a box of pencils in my car on the passenger side. So, get a pencil and get done. Okay? And you can sharpen your pencil. Your pencil sharpener in your room is sharpened. Got to get that school work done. It's hard sometimes. I understand not wanting to get it done, but sometimes I'm just like, "Disipline job. Just trying to get it done and go play." And she'll do that. She'll carry on for a little bit and then she'll get serious about it. Knock it out in no time. Just kids being kids. What are you going to do while I go video video edit? Be a kid. That's That is the best answer you could have ever said. It's got another load. Look there. Empty this off and then go check on Tyler K. see how she's doing with that lost pencil and how her schoolworks come along. I'm noticing that when Jay came through with the lane shark that it ripped up a lot of this cardboard that was still there and spread it around a bit. Maybe I'll get some of that up. The good news is it will break down, but it's not this most sightly thing coming down the driveway to look at. But then again, did you see this place before he cut it? [Music] Load three. That should finish it up at least for this layer of greens. Are you done? Yeah. With both? Yeah. Perfect. I want peanut butter and jelly sandwich cuz I'm hungry. Yeah. I was going to fix this. Just a second. You did spelling words in your essay. Yeah. What' you write about? I forgot. What do you mean you forgot? You just wrote it. How can you forget that book? Now I remember. It was about a day. It was a point. It was like a day. It was a It was a ploy. It was a morning. Well, since you didn't do it on Rosa Park, we'll do our um presentation on Rose Park. Sound good? Yeah. Yeah. But she's an important person in history. You should know history. It's a frog. I don't do frogs. What? Frog little bitty one over here. Here. Get the dog. Pull. Pull the dog toward the shop. That salt is gone. I don't even know where it is. Follow Grace. two initial loads of wood chips that I brought up, plus all the bark that was here um from the log piles and what Jay ra was three loads of greens. Worked out really well. The garden hose was able to reach just right at the end, which uh was a nice surprise because that wasn't anticipated, but we did good. The garden hose is just the right length for what we got here. All right, there's nothing hungrier than a homeschooler that doesn't want to do our work. So, this can go get me and Tyler K some lunch and then uh after that I'll come back and u try to start unrolling some of this hay and getting an extra layer of brown down. I got the wood chipper going. I didn't give up. I sharpened it all and I removed that bed plate. Not removed it, but I backed that bed plate up all the way. You're not slowing me down anymore, bed plate. doing what we're supposed to be doing finally. Yes. All right, back to getting a good resource for us. Persistence. Don't give up after you've already given up. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. [Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Well, we're mostly good. This is about a 6-in wide slab. It's not that tall pine, so it's not hard. And I keep breaking the shear pins now. The shear bolt, wherever it's at. Right there. All right. Grade five shear bolts is what this thing shear pins is what this thing calls for. Grade five keeps breaking. So, if I go up to a grade eight, that risks putting undue strain on both the drivetrain as well as the chipper, which means I don't know. I don't know what that means, but I guess I have to uh slow down the feed quite a bit on these larger ones, which it's already slow to begin with. It's at the lowest it'll possibly go without it uh actually stopping. So, all right, I'll keep tinkering. All [Applause] right. Well, I think I best go get some more greens while the green is still green. If I let it become browns, it's not doing me a lot of good, huh? But before that, let's water it down. Heat. Heat. All right. So, there's another green layer. kind of a thin layer, but I think that's okay. I'm going to wet that real quick and then put another layer of hay on. Kind of thin. And then I'm probably going to call it quits for today because I'm going to let you in. And um it's a lot of work. No. Go on. Go on, Nollie. Go on, Grace. Get down. Nlly, get down. Get down. Nlly, no. No. Go on right now. No, no, go on. Come on, Nie. Come on, Grace. Allie, go on. Grace, personally, I don't think that's too bad. I think that's a pretty good start anyway. working. So, I just want to let you know that your pal as tall as my pal, but mine's a lot longer. [Applause] All right. So, I chipped for about an hour and the only problem I had is I broke the shear pin once. So, I still don't know why I keep breaking the shear pin. I guess it's just maybe hits a knot in the wood or whatever. Uh, but operational. And I've got a pile of wood chips that Wow, it looks so small on the camera. All right. Well, there's that. Um, but from now on, I am making these slabs a lot smaller because my my plan for this stuff is to split it like you're splitting, you know, wood for firewood for a well, for firewood. And I'm wore out. There's no there's no other way to say it. I'm just wore out. That thing wore me out. But this pile was I mean it was huge. So got quite a lot quite a bit done. And then I get to review the footage of what you did. You did quite a bit today. Just watching her work over there. I know for sure she's done quite a bit. Let's go get some drinks and cool off. Hey Gracie. Gracie. Gracie. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] around. It's about 20 [Applause] Just look [Music]