JustinLonghorn said:You are definitely cut from the same cloth as your pops, Troy.
I love this project. It is beautiful, my man.
JustinLonghorn said:You are definitely cut from the same cloth as your pops, Troy.
I love this project. It is beautiful, my man.
thanks brothers. I really appreciate the kind words. My ol man is really special to me. This project is probably just as much about our journey together as it is about the finish line. I was recently motivated by a beautiful short film posted on Le Container. If you get a few minutes it's definitely worth a watch:
http://vimeo.com/20658635
Well, Its been one heck of a day. Started at 4:30a and i finally quit at 7p. The rain held off and the building is sitting on the trailer at the pond. The owner of the trailer is an old friend and without him we couldn't have pulled this off. WE pushed hard and worked pretty much non-stop. I hope at 70 i can do half the work of my Pap. Delbert is even older and works just as hard. He is a retired farmer and happens to be the person we purchased much of our hay equipment from. A few years back he had an accident and cut one of his arms off in a hay bailer. It was re-attached but has very limited use. He tried to return to farming but decided to retire and that's when we got into the hay business.
Dad and I started before the sun came up with a long list of things to do. Since we are working in fenced pastures we had to lock the animals in the barn and take down about 30' of fence. We cut the stumps to ground height and dad attached some braces to the headers. Since the building has to skid across the tops we didn't want to knock anything loose.
Sun up:
It took us about 5 hours to get to this point. The trailer just didn't want to go in. The slope gave us all the wrong angles. Took many many tries and a bunch of hand digging.
Delbert looking on:
lots of hand digging then lots of jacking and blocking
The building is still sitting on the post at this point:
Happy moment. The three of us take a minute to pose for a pic right after finally getting the building down on the trailer. All the post have been cut away and removed.
The slope leading into the building can be seen here. After we got the trailer under it had to be unhooked from the truck in order to jack and block it to meet the building. To get hooked back up the area where the truck's tires would hit had to be dug. There is a fairly steep bank on the lower side which also limited what could be done.
It's moving... The second photo down the trailer started pulling hard down the hill and the truck started sliding in the lose soil. Things started to get a little tricky
Earlier in the day we had to climb these trees and cut limbs. I also lifted my dad in the tractor's bucket to trim limbs. It was super tight working our way around the trees. We ended up almost against the tree at the end (about 1/2" away). Delbert and dad somehow kept the building from hitting it but things got real slow at that point. Not seen in these photos is the tractor chained to the truck. The building trailer started pulling hard on the truck and in the lose soil the truck couldn't hold it back. Took some quick rigging ;D
The truck is sitting in what was the emergency spill way. I spent about 3 hours today scrounging to find enough dirt to create a land bridge on to the dam. Ended up not being wide enough and one side ended up down off the side. Not only this place but there were also lots of other low places along the way so we had to use what ever we could to put under tires (notice the wood just behind the trucks front tire ;D ).
She is not on the headers yet but that can wait a day or three. We are in need of some much needed rest. I finished the day filling in holes where the posts for the building were so animals wouldn't break their legs. We also replace the two fences we took down earlier. next on the list is to talk to Rich about a possible road trip over the weekend ;D