Day 508 - Creating the Final Major Trail on Our 100-Acre Homestead | Baumalight MP360 in Action

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. We are deep in the woods. And this right here, you kind of can't see it just yet, but this is a trail. My four-wheeler can snake through here. And about a month ago, I made a video showing the before. And finally, we have weather cooperating with us to where it's dry enough that I can get back here with the tractor. So, the goal here is to not necessarily mulch everything, but these larger trees that are in the way, the mulcher will take them down and then I can use the grapple to actually move them so I can focus on speed, focus on getting this trail passable and not necessarily 100% mulched. There's no immediate need for me to mulch this entire tree, but the mulcher is a fantastic chainsaw. This mulchure is a Balomalite MP360. And I've already used this in three different locations on the property. And I tell you what, it is absolutely fantastic and and fascinating to be honest with you that we can get this much controlled chaos powered by this small of a tractor. This is a it's a compact tractor. It's a Bad Boy 4035H. It is a 35 horsepower 25 P. I'm sorry, 29.5. might as well say 30 PTO horsepower powering that big old 1,200 lb. Just beast. I'm so impressed with that thing. And then I've got the grapple up front. Like I said, we're going to use the mulcher to uh mulch what we can for the small brush and then take down the bigger trees. I'll use the grapple to move them out of the way. Uh that should be good enough. Also have my support crew with me over there. So camera gear and all that stuff was easy to bring as well as some some food. And hopefully this doesn't take a tremendous amount of time. So this is kind of like a um gully bound peninsula if that makes sense. There is a ditch right here, right in that shadowy area. There's a ditch that starts real shallow right here and gets deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And this trail that we're creating is going to hook around and right at the hook, it's about 20 or so feet down into the goalie. We're gonna hook around, come back, and enter into our already existing trail. This existing trail goes about as far as the eye can see, and it just stops. And it just stops because it's dense. It is very dense and small sweet gum saplings. The primary tree here is sweet gums. There are some other trees scattered throughout, but this is a dense sweet gum Blair Witch Project if you remember that movie. Kind of a forest. All right, I'm all set up for these trees. There's some small trees. That one right there is a little bit uh little big. It's about a 4-in diameter tree at the base. And this mulchure can do uh 3 in according to my horsepower rating on the tractor. But you can put this on like a 50 horse tractor and go all the way up to a 5 in if you uh stop and grind. So what I'll do is like I said, knock it over and then grind whatever is on the ground. Move the rest with the grapple. After this little stretch right here, though, it gets a little bit easier for quite a while. We have I've knocked this down with the with the uh four-wheeler quite a bit to try and try and see where the path wants to be. But all this is just briars and uh it should be fine. She's over there trying to make her own trail. until I get started. Then she's got to uh do school work in the side by side. The joys of homeschooling. Get to educate everywhere. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. So I heavy task right off the bat. Getting that over with makes me feel a lot better. There was I don't know where that first tree was. It was somewhere right here. But the second one, this right here, that was probably that was probably pushing it a little bit too much. No pun intended. I really had to push on the tractor in order to get it to um in order to get it to bite. Now, one thing that I really want on this tractor is a hydraulic top link. I do not have a hydraulic top link. So, I have the top link set, which I need to lock that real fast, but I have it set so it leans just a little bit further back. That way, this serrated edge right here will grab a hold of the tree and bend it over and get it out of the way as it's being cut. And yeah, it did it did the job. All right, so it's smooth sailing from here. Well, from here as far as I can see. Maybe that one might be a little bit challenging. I don't know. But like I said, knock them down, move them out of the way, keep going. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Yeah, we start to get a little bit more dense around this around this cedar tree, But all these small ones on on the side over here, they should be pretty easy. Nice little clearing right here. Natural grasses should come back. So, I think way over here is a good spot. The majority of this is just quick and easy stuff. There's also a lot of this stuff right here. Just down half rotted stuff that'll just I mean that that'll just break break into pieces. Yeah, that'll be easy to mulch. These briars don't stand a chance. Although I got to walk back through them, which is not the funnest ouch thing in the world. We'll be glad when these briars are gone and then we keep this road traveled, keep this trail traveled and we won't have much of an come back. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. All right, I want to show you something. All right, so here's the beginning of the trail. Right from here all the way there. Look at this. I had to look at the time stamp on the camera. It was um 10 uh 48. It is 11:18. So a half hour. We've got a road. Like this isn't a this isn't a trail. This is a road almost. My Jeep can fit through here no problem. But look at this. Just completely clear. Everything looks the same on the ground. It's just mulch. Well, minus these big pieces. So these big pieces are the parts of the down limbs that have been down for a while and they just kind of rot into mush, you know? So they just kind of throw pieces apart and that's okay. Just shred it. This is so soft. So soft. Pretty cool, though. Pretty cool. This is uh This is going way faster than I thought it would. Way faster. But we got another hardwood right here. I think this I don't know what that is. Not too sure, but it's a decent size hardwood. probably 3 and 12 in down here at the base. So, this is going to stress it just a little bit. But considering we got that 5 in over there, I think it'll be fine. And then I have a clear four-wheeler trail here, but this side's wider. I'm going to have to clear this side over here for the tractor and Jeep. I know my Jeep cannot fit over there. So, we'll clear this out. And all these, I mean, just they're nothing. These these are nothing. Oh, spider on the camera. Get off me. Get off me, spider. All right, spider's gone. Um, so these these are nothing, right? These are nothing for this mulchure. I want to leave this uh cedar tree because I don't have a use for this the the the uh material just yet. And I'm trying to leave all of the cedars cuz they take so long to grow until I have a need for that. And then yeah, you know, it's more of the same. This is going to go by fast. I need to just shut up and get to work. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. I was able to get most of the lowlying limbs on this cedar with the grapple. Most of them, not all of them. And I just Oh, there's just a layer of devastation. I just keep getting so excited about this. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. That tree was actually really tall. Um, shredded most of it, but this is the first time we got wrapped up. So, I have a uh dual PTO switch on that tractor. There's an actual lever to disengage and then also a button to engage. Both of those have to be turned on in order for this to engage. I just want you to know that the tractor is running cuz it's hot. Not hot, but it's at at uh at warm operating temperature and I didn't want to kill it immediately. Uh but this this first time I've wrapped into it and I don't think it's stuck. Well, I packed light tools today and some tin snips just happened to be in uh Jamie's side by side. So, got all of that out thankfully. I trim basically just cut a line all the way across and then uh turn the PTO on for a second and just threw everything out. But this was stuck. This little dude was stuck. Oh, actually the uh the uh I dropped the uh the three-point so it's stuck underneath there. All right. Well, that's fine. We're all mulched up. Uh, I think I'm just going to roll with like a time lapse going forward. This is all, you know, same old song and dance. And I'm not quite at the halfway point. Oh, this this stuff right here. Watching this jungle right here go away. It's just so much fun. This is so much fun. I'm I'm creating my own trails on my forever property. This This is living life, folks. Heat up Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat up Heat. Heat. got done with the trail full loop finally. It is 3:43. I forget what the uh starting point was as far as time goes. This is the small little trail that we started and this is the trail we cut today. It wraps all the way around back into here. So, finally have a full loop on this this little peninsula that has just just one access point, which is pretty cool. Speaking of pretty cool, this side of the trail is gorgeous. It is awesome. Flanked by real old tall trees, hardwoods, and there's no obstructions in the trail. I'll tell you what, I've I've cut trail with the uh piranha bar on the front bucket of my tractor. I've cut trail with just the root rake grapple yanking trees out of the ground. Uh I've cut trail, excuse me, with a chainsaw and a pole saw. And I've cut trail with that Balmite MP360. And that mulure is by far the best way to cut trail. And one of the main reasons is yes, it does mulch and just absolutely destroy all this debris. There's a lot of stuff like this, like I didn't waste my time trying to get this absolutely mulched down. Stuff like that's not going to bother me at all. Uh but the greatest benefit of using the mulcher to cut a trail is that you don't leave any holes behind from like when you rip up the roots and whatnot. That that leaves holes behind. And I've got one trail that's just I mean I need to almost till the entire trail. It's so bad. Uh but this trail is perfect. This trail is good enough for horses to walk on without any problems whatsoever. Um this is good. This is great. Some real gnarly looking spiderw webs all through here. That's pretty cool to see. Uh once we get to I don't know if you can even see it. There's a light spot way down there and that is across the across the uh goalie to the original spot that we forestry mulched. After that, it turns around and comes all the way around and you can see the the bright sunny spots over there. That's the other side of the trail coming through and then it connects up over there. So anyway, uh I had to quit recording for a while there because after after about as far as your eyes can see right here, uh it just turned into a dust bowl. Absolute dust bowl. I I mean I I even quit recording with the GoPro because I just kept having to wipe the lens off. Just a big dust bowl and makes me cough. And I hope it wasn't a bunch of poison ivy stuff. And Tyler's been having a good old time jumping on trees and and uh swinging from vines and whatnot. Did you find anything cool out here today? I found a turtle. You found a turtle? Was it Leonardo or Donatello? No, I actually named it Foo since we talked about kung fu today. You named it Foo cuz we talked about kung fu today. Wonderful. Wonderful. There's a lot of turtles here, huh? Mhm. What's the name of our pond? Turtle Pond. Turtle Pond. Wonder why it's called Turtle Pond, huh? All right. Anyway, I'm getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. I'm going to cut this short. I'm going to grab these two cameras, go back, grab my drone, and hopefully get a full loop recorded from the drone. That would be fun. You know, one of these days I'm going to give you a camera. Yeah. You want like a GoPro camera or do you want a uh point and shoot and zoom camera? GoPro. GoPro. Yeah. You like to run around, don't you? Mhm. I remember me and my friend Lily just like did used a GoPro to make videos, which we thought were going to go on YouTube. Yeah. You thought, well, you're a little too young to be putting your own stuff on YouTube. But I do have those videos of you and Lily from our last house. She's a spider web. You see that? What is that floating right there? That's so cool. What is that? I don't know. It's like a Is that a worm inside a spiderweb? Yep. Some type of caterpillar or something other than spiderweb. Just died. Just died. Oh, well, it's about to be eaten. But anyway, I got those videos that you and Lily recorded. I got all the videos of you archived. When you're 25 years old, 30 years old, you're going to love to look back on them. All that dust going everywhere. You see that? Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Got a little bit of a dip right here. Okay. So, we're going to go slow. Look where you're driving. You're crashing a tree. Little bit of a dip. Turn a little left. Round three. Wheels. Oh, there we go. Round four again. Just watch your wheels as they're out of the pitch. Okay. Oh, we got a tree down. I didn't know that was down. You want to move this tree with the grapple or do you want me to? You want me to? All right. Keep going. Get out of the ditch. All right. I'm going to put it in low gear. Okay. You keep steering. I'm going to I'm going to use the the controls. Okay. That's a big tree. Uhhuh. Turn your wheel to the right. Okay. All the way to the right. Okay. Now, all the way to the left. Hold on. Straight up. You got to see this little tree right here. Yeah. You got to get past it. Okay. Do you think that was down? Huh? You think that was down? Turn left. H. We're not going to clear that over here. All right. So, turn right again. All right. Turn straight. Got our wheels on the tree. Turn straight. Turn straight. A little more to your left. Little more to the left. You can see the wheel over here. We got to go to the left. Keep going to the left. Left. There we go. Now, keep going left. I think we're going to clear it over there. Oh yeah. Now we're dropping it. Now we're going to back up and get a We're going to back up and get a better bite at it now. Okay. All right, I want you to drive over there. Okay, drive right where I'm pointing the big tree over there. Point it towards that tree. Keep going. Keep going. Now I want you to point it that way. All right. Push it. Now I want you to point it to the right. Keep going. So the tires point to the right. All right. Now left. A little bit of back and forth. Keep going all the way to the left. All the way. Push it up against the pine. Wrap it around. You did it. Huh? You want to do the pedals, too? Yeah. All right. I throttled it down. You can do the pedals and the steering at the same time. Yeah. Okay. I'll I'll hold on to that. Here we go. That was a big tree we moved. Yeah. We're getting all the spiderw webs and Jamie back there at the mules not getting any of them. All right, we got to go in low gear in order to get up this hill. Yeah. Off. Go ahead. There's a daddy long leg on my foot. You got a daddy long leg on your foot? Like on my ankle or something like that. I'm in the hill. Here we go. All the way up. Don't stop. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Oh man. Can you turn that to high gear? High gear. All right. Go ahead. Forward. Hard foot. Do you remember the way home from here? Yeah. Okay, go ahead. It's kind of nice riding the tractor, not having to do anything. You're not surprised I said that? Now up here. Don't go. Keep going, but don't go through the mud. We're going to go to the left. Okay. Heat. Heat. Oh, when it's bumpy, you got to go slow. All right. Can I back up so it won't be as hard as you want? Do you want to? Yeah. Is there anything behind you? But do you want to back up? You got to make sure nothing's behind you. Do you want me to jump off? Yeah. All right. What are you going to do? Yeah. Make a circle very And you're going to park it. Where are you going to park it at? Close to it. Don't go on the compost. Okay. I didn't. Yeah. All right. Gave the car keys to my daughter. I have no idea what she wants to do, but she or what she's going to do, but she said she wanted to back up and do something or other. Sure. Just don't run into anything. Oh, she's going to back up. completely back up and back into the compost area. Might be a little biased, but I think she looks good on a tractor. You're doing good. Hey, remember, don't turn the wheel so much when you're sitting still. Only when you're rolling. Okay. Of course, the GoPro battery just died. You done? Yeah. Turn the key off. All right. Now, lower the uh loader. The front loader all the way. Good job. Now, lower the three-point. Do you remember that one? It's behind you on your right hand side. Whatever direction it is, push it the other way. There you go. You want to do a honk? Do a victory honk. Heat. Heat.