The Life of a Custom Mowing contractor

[Hay Dude]

Could the 4 6 be the railroad gauge?

Your guess is as good as mine. If there was a “-“ between the numbers, I was going to guess “4 - 6 MPH”.

 

[sixdogs]

Your guess is as good as mine. If there was a “-“ between the numbers, I was going to guess “4 - 6 MPH”.

Maybe a RR survey or plot marker?

 

[dodge man]

Railroads use mile markers similar to highways. It might be a mile marker.

 

[Hay Dude]

Railroads use mile markers similar to highways. It might be a mile marker.

Could be, but that rail line is very short. I think the other side has a different number on it.

Another interesting RR comment: About 300 yards up the track there’s a farm where I bale hay. The son of the owner of the farm told me on the side of the RR berm, there’s a steel door with a padlock on it. It’s buried under 50 years of dirt, debris, etc.
One day, equipped with a 4’ piece of rebar, I probed the berm for 1/2 hour or so and found something that felt/sounded like steel. I didn’t have the time/equipment to explore further.

Someday I’m going to go back and see what it was. My gut tells me its probably a small electrical room or box, but who knows.

 

[civilian]

Agree on the mile marker on the RR post. We have them on concrete posts here on an almost abandoned RR line. So many miles from the town of Bay City downstate in MI. Jon

 

[RayIN]

Sometimes I don’t know if I should just let my property owners keep going the way they are? Theres good money in clearing them

re: concerning overhanging limbs at field edge. Consider carrying a battery pole saw on your tractor.
It works for the smaller irritating limbs.

 

[Hay Dude]

Back at it this week and got into some chipping. I have a customer who will not under any circumstances burn so much as a twig. However, they have 128 acres that they neatly landscape, so all the years of brush, limbs, etc get dragged into a big pile.

It is my job to do a bi-yearly chipping of 2+ years of accumulated branches & yard debris. Here we are on day one with a 12” diesel chipper I rented from my local farm/property equipment rental shop.

Here we are on the other side of the pile, 3 days later. The original chipper had an over-heating issue, so they brought me a bigger & better one. This is the one I had originally reserved for the work, but the previous renter was late returning it. It’s muddy as heck and I’m dreading pulling it out of the valley back up to the road.
Another tree fell, right next to the pile, so we’ll clean that up while we’re here. I’m in the cab of the Challenger

Pretty much finished up. Left the customer a pickup truck size pile of chips for their use.

Notice all the broken-off trees or broken branches? This is the place where we had 100+ MPH straight line winds. Damaged thousands of trees.

 

[Complete Turf Care]

This is where a skid steer with a grapple bucket would be handy.

 

[Hay Dude]

This is where a skid steer with a grapple bucket would be handy.

Not so much for me.
I have a farm tractor with a log grapple and it works fine.

I would like to have a mini/mdi-ex with a grapple though.

 

[hayden]

Not so much for me.
I have a farm tractor with a log grapple and it works fine.

View attachment 2834873

I would like to have a mini/mdi-ex with a grapple though.

I can work a much longer day feeding branches and small trees into my chipper using the mini-ex, vs hauling and feeding them by hand. You have to be a bit more organized about stacking stuff so it's pointing in the right direction, but then it goes real fast.