Stuck in the Mud

Last weekend we had 3 loads of topsoil delivered to help the recovery of some ground near the barn. We had put down the winter manure and bedding mix and now wanted to cover it with a layer of soil before seeding. This will add another 4000 sqft of pasture for the cria section. On Thursday, Bill the local dairy farmer who helped pull out the dump truck last weekend came by with his front loader to move the soil from the dump spot to the locations I needed and smooth out a couple of old manure (now soil) piles.

It rained on Friday, so I waited to Saturday late afternoon before I started smoothing Bills small piles with my little tractor and blade. I was about 90% done on one the second area I was working on and found a very wet hole that was nicely covered up by soil. The entire rightside of the tractor went it and was not coming out under its own power. Caroline was not pleased and said I should have known better (which is true but I had the time and new I was pushing the limits and had lots to get done.)
I went up and got the 4 wheel drive truck hoping to tow it out. But this was unsucessful as well and ended up chewing up more ground. Caroline even was frustrated with my stupidity. I at least did not get the truck stuck and called it a night.

Sunday, thankfully, was sunny and hot which helped dry somethings some more. I waited until after lunch before tackling the job of digging out the tractor. I had dug around the tractor removing some of the soil from the driving path and was about to attempt another pull out with the hard earth now being dry. Tony our tenant though arrived and said that would still not work and we needed to jack up the tractor, stick wood underneath and then drive the tractor away. So I got the 2.5 ton jack, some 2X6 planks and a few big rocks to stop the jack from sinking under the weight. After an our we had got the tractor high enough to get to pallets under the right side and were able to drive the tractor away.

While I did not get the two other sections done for spreading, I at least finished this one and then mowed the lawn.