We dug into the hill when we built my house. Mother Nature has been trying to take it back ever since by sending torrents of water and slit down the hill onto my back porch. It's now the rainy season here in the Southwest, so it's time to take preventative action by digging out the last few years' worth of sand between the "retaining" wall and the porch. It should hold off a couple of floods before I have to do it again.
The tractor just fits between the house and the wall and takes some rather tricky maneuvering to move the dirt away in the right places. Just the job to learn how to drive my first tractor. 
8 comments:
Looks like a tight fit to me!
How long did it take you to remove that silt before you got the tractor? Did you have to shovel it by hand??
The first time we paid The Backhoe Lady (really!) to redo the slope away from the house. That helped for a few years, mostly because we were in a major drought and didn't get the big rains. Last year we dug trenches by hand around the porch and the rest of the back wall of the house to channel the run-off away. And that, my friends, is WHY WE BOUGHT THE TRACTOR!!!
*remembers the Backhoe Lady*
Was digging into the hill a necessity for the site or a thought toward passive heating/cooling, or...?
A little of both. The ground was not quite level anywhere, but this was the best location for the southeast exposure we needed for solar gain. Most of the digging into the hill was done to have enough room around the site for the actual process of building.
The next project is to extend the retaining wall around the corner and put drainage conduit at the base of the whole thing.
Now that you have a tractor, you can get a back-hoe attachment and become the NEW back-hoe lady.
It is so weird for me to look at desert pictures. Good weird.
I admire anyone who can drive a tractor.
So how long would it take you to drive on over to the San Pedros and fix our road? Can you use that tractor to pull down dead Ponderosas? Does it have a PTO? Are you going to get a post-hole drilling attchment? The possibilities are endless!-YKW
*laughs* Great questions!
...oh yes, and what about snow plowing???
It does have a PTO, we are not planning any post-hole digging, I'm sure it would pull down the trees, but I wouldn't want to be the one driving it at the time. I think it would take about three weeks to drive it to the San Pedros (an hour's drive by car), but if you know anyone with a flatbed to haul it we can talk.
dp, I'm sure it will move enough snow to keep us from being snowed in again. We are thinking about getting a snow blade on the front.
Post a Comment