ROLLING FIRE WITH THE CAT 963...LAND CLEARING ADVICE TO SAVE TIME/MONEY...AERIAL FOOTAGE AND MORE!

hey folks its Josh tawny Ridge farmer welcome to the farm vlog today we're gonna go over and see the progress of the bulldozers they've been working for I think this is day number five or six and we're just gonna go over there we're gonna look at what they're doing we've got a couple huge fires going here on the farm I'll take you over and show you those and we'll just kind of talk about what's going on and what our bulldoze are guys doing here now so come along we'll have some fun [Music] so guys what you're seeing here is he's putting kind of the final touches on certain areas of land there are fires burning I think there are five huge fires burning one two three four five and there's one great big one we'll take you over here and show you now there are two directions he's cutting the grooves he's cut grooves down the hill right here which in my mind doesn't make any sense okay if you're gonna cut grooves down the hill if he's back dragging you can see right there's what he's doing he's just kind of back dragging and smoothing the land well if you cut the grooves down the hill and it rains up the hill it's gonna wash okay so in my mind I say that's not the right thing to do and I'm gonna ask him to cut several grooves this way just like he's done here so if you see this is horizontally this is against the lay of the land in other words it's not running off down the hill we don't want it to run off down the hill the entire danger with this is washing runoff and washing you could wash a ditch three foot deep in this soft ground within a matter of minutes during a thunderstorm I'm over here partly to show you what's going on and partly to stop him and say hey we're supposed to get storms tomorrow cut me some grooves the other way to stop that water flow because we're simply gonna have a washing problem now why am I telling you this I'm telling you this so that you know when you have your land cleared what to do and the thought processes that need to go into it this hillside over here you can see the green grass on that hillside was all cut against the grain in other words to where the water would not rush down the hill in any area that was cut differently any area that wasn't against the grain washed okay so it's very very important if you're having land cleared and it's on a hillside to pay attention to this and make sure you control washing so before we go over and look at the big fire you'll see in the drone footage and we'll talk as we fly over and the pond is right there just above the pond is another area it's just been cleared okay now the goal is to get grass on this as quickly as possible okay so as soon as he's done here a tractor comes over and we dis this up with a two-stage disc we disc it with a really heavy disc that digs down on the ground probably eight or ten inches and really really turns that soil up and breaks up all these little dirt clods then we come through with the little lighter disc in a drag and what we drug last time was a piece of railroad track okay we'll drag that flat then we'll come in with the seed drill and we'll drill seed down into this and we'll basically drill fescue seat and we'll drill a rye grass that will sprout very quickly so we don't have washing issues now as I was saying above the pond over there we've got another huge burn pile well we've had a lot of wind in April in North Carolina and I don't know about where you live there's a lot of wind there wind issues now there's not a lot that can catch on fire back here because the field is green and it's my field and if it catches on fire big deal it's not a big deal but over here above the pond I don't own that forest I don't own that area and the danger is I could set the neighbor's house on fire so we've got to be really careful when we burn this and you know these guys they do this for a living he's a pro at it so I trust him I trust him to do the right thing and to call the fire department if the fire gets out you're gonna be paying somebody $100 an hour to operate equipment on your farm you better make sure that they're good and you better watch them make sure they're doing exactly what you want because it's a lot of money to spend for somebody to do something that you don't want them to do now we're standing in the middle of three gigantic burn piles that burn piles as big as a house that burned piles as big as a house and this burn pile over here the biggest one is as big as three houses and we'll fly over this and I'll talk to you about it on the drone flight a little bit we've got one pile that's not lit back here you got to be careful if you light too much on fire and something gets out of hand you've really really got to be careful so this is very very dangerous and I mentioned that in a previous vlog so we're back here and this may be where we build our house for sure we're going to build a cabin back here we have a waterfall and a little camping area set up back here on the farm you know not only do we have our farm for raising animals and selling animals and raising crops we also have our farm to have a beautiful place a place where people like you can come and stay so eventually we'll have a farm steak cabin back here and you can come experience the Stoney Ridge farm and we'll keep you posted on that we'll show you the whole build we'll show you everything so when I fly the drone around it'll put all this into perspective just a little bit more and we'll be able to explain a little bit more of what's going on if you look back here just behind that fire you really can't see it but there's another hillside that we're going to be clearing off probably in the fall or in next spring guys we're going to get you a little bit of footage of how we burn these piles basically he'll take the bucket on the loader and just stir the pile up and you get air in there and it helps it to burn faster so we're going to ride over here real quick and we'll show you some of that too it's pretty cool to watch all right folks so we got a little clarification with the machine operator here so currently he is just cleaning up this area and then when he gets done with his final drag he's gonna drag it against the grain so that it doesn't wash that was already in his plans and I jumped the gun kind of thinking hey man you need to do it this way you know when you get a professional doing this kind of stuff you kind of just need to let them roll with it and just trust that they're gonna do the right thing and then at the end come back and look over what they've done and tell them to adjust this or that so just lessons learned working with heavy equipment you guys are going to be clearing land on your farm or your place we're just clearing a spot for your house this is all good food for thought what you're seeing here is he's basically rolling this pile in order to get that fire stoked up he'll turn it and let a little more air in and turn it in let them a little more air in eventually and it'll just start to burn everything away [Music] all right this is going to be a good one he's going to come around the backside and roll all the stuff that isn't burning over on to the flame here you'll see this is gonna be really cool these are some heavy heavy machines this is a caterpillar 960 3 B it has a six-cylinder caterpillar engine in it you can see it already starting to smoke up I don't know if you guys like this kind of thing but if you do click that like button let me know what you're thinking I sure enjoy watching heavy equipment go to work especially when I'm paying $100 an hour for it now you see how it's starting to flame up pretty good that's the goal we got to keep the fire hot by turning it just like stoking a campfire kind of can tell how rough it is through here the Gator so he got in there and he stirred that fire and look at the puffs of smoke that went up huge [Music] now this one's burning really good here we go with the biggest fire right here you guys are gonna love this drone footage when I get them up in the air and you can see all this stuff burning it's really really cool huge huge fires we're probably 40 50 feet away from this fire and the heat is just crazy hot so he's just rolling that stuff over in there stirring it getting some oxygen in there alright guys let's do a little fly over here so we're starting on the corner above the pond right here and that's the brush pile we're gonna set on fire in the next vlog and actually if you caught Sunday's blog that's the one that set the woods on fire across the road now you're getting ready to see something that's not very obvious but if you look to the left of the screen you can see the power line and I was trying to miss the power line and right here I shoot in between the two power lines I've been crashing the drone a lot lately whoo man that made me nervous and then I think I stopped right underneath the power line so not so bright here we are on the edge of the pond this is kind of an unusable area it's really steep right here on the right down below us and the loader is back dragging a little bit pushing up some of that debris that's laying on the ground so we'll get a little shot of the loader doing some work here for a minute and kind of shoot up in the air and give you a little bit of scale a little bit of size perspective on this yeah almost hits that tree right there but if he makes it just in time give you a little bit of scale you can see the smoke cloud just puffing up right there above the loader in a second here that's the Creek that you see to the left it's a pretty substantial Creek and the trees that are left there are my stream buffer barrier to help filter the water as it gets into the creek now let's give you some scale we just had lit this fire right here and stirred it up a little bit that one that's blazing up really big so you see all the fires we've got you look to your top left kinda of the clearing area there's another pile back behind that smoke that will light on Sunday it's kind of behind a tree but so neat how the drone gives you such a perspective on the land the lay of the land and just a perspective on the size of this project it's a huge huge project to the far right of the screen is a old tobacco barn that's falling in so we'll fly over this flame here and it's a little bit on the touchy side because this is really really hot so I got to get away from it pretty quick this section right here that you're looking at will be cleared soon and we'll go back over you can see where the tracks are where he rode and stirred those fires up a little bit and he just kinda goes through and he'll do a little bit of clearing and dress up work and then he'll go back and address the fires so there's another bit of perspective to the right there that's the land that was cleared previously and we thought we'd fly behind the house here and show you the goats we expanded the goat pin a little bit so if you follow the vlog you might have seen something about that or you may see it in a future vlog I can't remember I've got several that need to be edited right now but this is all new pasture and then I thought we'd fly over one more time see the pond this is directly in front of us is where the fire will start on Sunday got out of hand thanks a lot for joining us here on the Stoney Ridge farm we got a lot going on thought I'd give you an update so we'll see you next time on the Stoney Ridge farm guys please click that like button subscribe to the channel and follow us on our farm journey it's gonna be something awesome see you next time [Music] Pierce we've had some ways opposed to me stone Tyrion Oh