Someone Else's Tractor
I got someone else's tractor stuck. A nice grandmother's tractor. I got it stuck. While she let me use it to get a load of manure. And I got it stuck.
It was a heart rending moment. I was using her tractor to load my trailer full of manure from her farm. It's been cold enough that there was a crust frozen on the manure. Her tractor is a geared transmission, a tricck to drive and not familiar to me. I was doing OK with it at first. My biggest problem was that with the manure pile frozen, I had to break the crust into small enough pieces this tractor could lift. This is an 870 tractor, I am not sure what it's lift capacity is.
So there I was, peacefully minding my own business, when the front wheels slipped off the frozen crust into the soft muck that I had exposed. The manure pile is out behind the barn, down a slope in a kind of marshy area. Looking down, I knew it wasn't going to be good. The criust was at about the half way point on the wheel. I tried backing up, but the crust just broke off and the wheel sank further. I wasn't up to the fram yet, but I knew that if I would be if I kept going like this.
I was a little surprised, I couldn't find a differential lock on this tractor. With that, I probably could have backed out with out much problem. I jiggled around a little more, getting myself in deeper, thinking about the conversation with the grandmother. "Uhm, I think I got the tractor stuck." What would I expect her to do? She doesn't even drive it, her grandson does that for her. She's not going to push it out. And I would be surprized if she had something to pull it out.
It's not like I was even stuck all that bad. Yet. The problem was I was only getting deeper.
The obvious had not occured to me yet. A lot of tractors, the loader can pickup the front end of the tractor. Mine can. I have seen many pictures of tractors for sale demonstrating their continued vigor but pickeing themselves up. But when I planted the bucket flat and tried the down circuit, this tractor could not. I boosted up the throttle and tried again. But htis only proved that more throttle does not equal more hydraulic pressure, just faster flow. Luckily, the lift arms are not a fellas last resort. After maxing out the lift arms, I used the curl to give a little more push. That was enough to get the tire almost out of the mud.
I used a some blocking from the trailer to push a bunch of mud under the tire and set it down. Doing this a couple of times I was able to get the wheel high enough off the mud to get some blocking under the tire and crib it out. And then I was able to back out of the hole.
I was really happy I didn;t need to go tell that grandmother I got her tractor stuck. I finidhed loading the trailer, staying away from any soft areas. About half of it I loaded into the bucket by hand with a fork to avoid taking any chances. I thanked the grandmother for the use of her tractor and the manure, alluded that there were some soft spots out there and took my load of goat poo home before anything really bad could happen.
This is the third load of poo we have brought home with the new trailer. Each time it has been a full trailer load, about six yeards. I'd estimate that each load was close to 2500 lbs. But it is pretty amazing how the pile shrinks. After the first two weeks, the first load shrank by at least a third. That's because it is working, I know. But it is a little disconcerting. All that work, and the pile keeps getting smaller.
Since this is the last laod we'll do this year, we should cove the pile to keep it warmer (hold in the heat). Some of this is pretty fresh and it would be nice if we could get it active enough to use it next spring. The field really needs a lot of amendment.
It was a heart rending moment. I was using her tractor to load my trailer full of manure from her farm. It's been cold enough that there was a crust frozen on the manure. Her tractor is a geared transmission, a tricck to drive and not familiar to me. I was doing OK with it at first. My biggest problem was that with the manure pile frozen, I had to break the crust into small enough pieces this tractor could lift. This is an 870 tractor, I am not sure what it's lift capacity is.
So there I was, peacefully minding my own business, when the front wheels slipped off the frozen crust into the soft muck that I had exposed. The manure pile is out behind the barn, down a slope in a kind of marshy area. Looking down, I knew it wasn't going to be good. The criust was at about the half way point on the wheel. I tried backing up, but the crust just broke off and the wheel sank further. I wasn't up to the fram yet, but I knew that if I would be if I kept going like this.
I was a little surprised, I couldn't find a differential lock on this tractor. With that, I probably could have backed out with out much problem. I jiggled around a little more, getting myself in deeper, thinking about the conversation with the grandmother. "Uhm, I think I got the tractor stuck." What would I expect her to do? She doesn't even drive it, her grandson does that for her. She's not going to push it out. And I would be surprized if she had something to pull it out.
It's not like I was even stuck all that bad. Yet. The problem was I was only getting deeper.
The obvious had not occured to me yet. A lot of tractors, the loader can pickup the front end of the tractor. Mine can. I have seen many pictures of tractors for sale demonstrating their continued vigor but pickeing themselves up. But when I planted the bucket flat and tried the down circuit, this tractor could not. I boosted up the throttle and tried again. But htis only proved that more throttle does not equal more hydraulic pressure, just faster flow. Luckily, the lift arms are not a fellas last resort. After maxing out the lift arms, I used the curl to give a little more push. That was enough to get the tire almost out of the mud.
I used a some blocking from the trailer to push a bunch of mud under the tire and set it down. Doing this a couple of times I was able to get the wheel high enough off the mud to get some blocking under the tire and crib it out. And then I was able to back out of the hole.
I was really happy I didn;t need to go tell that grandmother I got her tractor stuck. I finidhed loading the trailer, staying away from any soft areas. About half of it I loaded into the bucket by hand with a fork to avoid taking any chances. I thanked the grandmother for the use of her tractor and the manure, alluded that there were some soft spots out there and took my load of goat poo home before anything really bad could happen.
This is the third load of poo we have brought home with the new trailer. Each time it has been a full trailer load, about six yeards. I'd estimate that each load was close to 2500 lbs. But it is pretty amazing how the pile shrinks. After the first two weeks, the first load shrank by at least a third. That's because it is working, I know. But it is a little disconcerting. All that work, and the pile keeps getting smaller.
Since this is the last laod we'll do this year, we should cove the pile to keep it warmer (hold in the heat). Some of this is pretty fresh and it would be nice if we could get it active enough to use it next spring. The field really needs a lot of amendment.
posted by MMP at
7:23 PM
1 Comments:
Ouch! What a heart thumping moment. So glad you figured it out. You engineers are awesome. I am frequently glad that I married one, myself, cause I'm pretty useless in those situations. Walter has used that "do a push up with the tractor" trick to get out of a couple of sticky situations. Nice little bit of thinking there. : )
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Anonymous, at 10:32 AM
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