March 14th: Tractor, Chipper and Mud!

After all the excitement from the day before... waking up Saturday it was hard to believe our weekend was only half over. Zach's parent's neighbors gave my dad a great deal on a 4-wheel drive tractor and trailer. My dad was eager to buy a tractor again (it's been a few years since he had one in NY), and this one, although smaller than he originally wanted to buy, it had been hardly used, came with an auger, and a trailer. Once my dad had secured the purchase of the tractor (a few weeks ago),  we went ahead and purchased the PTO chipper. Chippers can either run on their own motor (expensive option) or can hook up through a PTO attachment to a tractor (cheaper option). Even though a PTO chipper is less expensive, it's actually safer, and can take bigger branches (ours takes up to 8 inch branches)than a comparable gas powered stand alone chipper.

So Saturday morning we got the chipper hooked up to the tractor, and the tractor/chipper loaded onto the trailer, then headed out to Hidden Hills. We could haul the trailer 11 of the 13 miles, but then the road gets a little dicey. So my dad drove the tractor/chipper the last adventurously muddy 2 miles. We got stuck a few times, but he maneuvered it like a pro! When we parked the chipper next to the first pile of branches, Zach saw that somehow a piece had come loose and fallen out :/ We couldn't chip without the missing piece. None of us were defeated by this. Just getting the equipment out there was an accomplishment of its own.

  Instead we continued to clear more trees, and trim some trees for fire safety (cutting branches from 0-4 feet up from the ground). Since we had a large area cleared (80ft x 80ft) we started burning a lot of smaller branches and brush. For 3 hours we had a nice size bonfire going.

The weather was so nice, and the kids were awesome workers. We are excited to get the 6x6 up here to pull some stumps out, and get the chipper fixed up to get chippin!

Today's Guest List:

Our Crew

Grandpa Mike

Grandpa Les

Simon

Jo

**UPDATE** Zach called the company we purchased the chipper from. After explaining what happened, they informed us that the part that came loose shouldn't have come loose. So they shipped out the part free of charge!