Mowing heavy brush on a steep pond bank! Stuck? Find out here!

hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome to the farm blog today we gonna have some fun today so we're over here at the pond and we've already been working a little bit the dogs love the pond water by the way we've already been working a little bit trimming up the banks on the pond and you can see how nice this looks what you can't see is that this drops off about three feet over the edge right there and it's really really steep well we use the ventrac to get over that edge and the ventrac will mow on a 30 degree embankment what we've got to finish is this that is steep that is a mess the next thing we have to finish you can't see because it's down that steep hill right there so come along today on the farm blog as we put this ventrac to the test I've already mowed up to the point that I think it's going to start getting a little bit hairy so we're gonna throw the drone up in the air I have a couple different cameras that I'm going to use today when you come back here after the intro I'll show you the cameras we're gonna use and we'll talk more about all the fun we're gonna have today on the farm all right [Music] [Applause] [Music] I guess first of all for those of you who are new to the channel this is the ventrac this is the honey badger the guys that subscribe to the channel of nickname this thing the honey badger that is called the tough cut and it's basically a brush cutter slash bush hog that we've used to mow the entire farm with the exception of about three acres we use this machine to bush hog our entire farm awesome and now we're going to take it and we're going to drop it off the edge of a would be cliff it's really hard to take a camera and show you the steepness of an embankment but we're right here on a nice beautiful flat pond down and there's a little slope here and there's a huge slope right here this is probably 25 degrees maybe 30 degrees maybe pushing the limits of the ventrac the first shot that we're going to take is going to be off over the edge and this is further than you can take a zero turn this is further than you can take it conventional tractor safely without rolling off over the hill rolling into the creek or rolling into the pond the whole reason we leased the ventrac was to maintain around the pond we had no idea what a great job he would do on the rest of the fields if you look out there all that was mode with the ventrac once we tossed a drone up in the air you'll get an idea of this 25 well it's probably about 35 acre field now we mowed that entire area with the ventrac - so without further ado let's show you the camera equipment because we're gonna drop off over the edge let me just step down here three steps down and my head's already at the same level as the top of the dam this is steep guys this is really steep it's gonna be fun I've got a plan to show you how steep it is let me show you hear that crotch rocket go by we call those a crotch rocket or a super sport bike when I was younger I had a sport bike like that now I wish those people were not around they go down through here like nine hundred miles an hour and that's what I used to do and now I'm like you're slowing I'd been down I'm getting over that guess let's show you the gimbal so we're gonna be using our cell phone gimbal I rigged up some stuff it's gonna be fun so this is the gimbal setup and this is what I use to film my live streams this is a GoPro mount that's a big magnet we're gonna stick this somewhere that makes sense on the ventrac because check this out this is what this thing does watch it wakes up and it levels it always levels itself so as we turn off over the hill it will continue to stay level it will level itself my goal is to show you just how steep a bank this is because it's gonna go right out a level insane this thing's pretty cool when I make turns you'll notice that it turns nice and smooth that's the camera geek stuff that's going on right now I think we're gonna try and mount this guy right up here on the hood probably facing forward just like that I think that makes the most sense that's a GoPro that should smooth out some of the footage I hope we can get some good footage with that we're gonna get the drone also so this is the DJI maverick pro this is what we'll be using this what I use on the vlog is what I fly all the time we have over my head directly over my head power lines power lines and drone they don't go together so good so cross your fingers last time I flew the drone cutting and mowing I had a boo-boo and I ran straight into the palate fork so cross your fingers that I don't crash but it's kind of fun when I do let's get busy it's far too tractor up golf over the side of a cliff awesome so I was totally waiting until golden hour to do this till the best time of day to do this so we could get the best light for this show by our beautiful pond here and the gods are against me man there's a big dark cloud coming our way so fingers crossed if it starts raining we'll have to pack the cameras up we'll come back here in the morning and we'll show you what we've done I've really got a bust but so I'm gonna get busy here and then we'll review after we get done we'll get you some cool drone footage we'll put some cool music with it and we're going to drop off over the edge of this cliff that's gonna be awesome the dogs are trying to catch a fish get that water boy get that water get water [Music] [Applause] thing is insane it's scary you just feel like you shouldn't be there you feel like you're rock crawling out in the desert somewhere it is just a crawler man it did a miracle on this pawn damn I've got a little bit more work to do a little bit more dress up work and we're gonna get over here on the other side I hope we beat the storm if we can we'll get the footage [Music] well the black cloud overhead got us man it started raining like crazy and let me tell you what you don't get on a steep Bank like that in the rain so we just about got this side done just a little bit more I'm gonna kind of avoid the steep spots to really steep spots we'll come back over here in the morning get you a sunrise drone shot at the ending credits of this video but man what an amazing little tractor I would never attempt this stuff with a regular farm tractor or zero-turn anything never ever would I go off that this normally took me somewhere in the neighborhood of six hours to weed eat so I would weed eat all this every year twice a year all the way around the pond all of it would get weeded I don't have to weed it anymore and it's a little known fact to most people that a tree on your Pond Dam is not a good thing so you would think that a tree right here on the dam would hold the dirt in place but it's really converse to that it's really something that could rot and cause animals to burrow and put holes in your dam so you want to keep your dam devoid of trees we cleared all the trees off this dam when we bought the land you could not walk through here you couldn't push your way through here there were so many trees on this dam so we got it all fixed up good stuff thanks a lot guys I appreciate you watching today be sure and stay tuned for the end credits we'll get over here first thing in the morning with a sunrise and show you what this hillside looks like it's gonna be beautiful we'll see you next time on a Stoney Ridge all right ringing Wow [Music] Pierce we had some ways opposed to me stone Tyrion Oh