The Big Scrape! Bobcat Skid loader..building campsite areas..and finishing up the new gravel road!

morning folks it's josh tony rich farmer welcome back to the farm vlog this is the part two of trying to get all that mulch over in our little camping area our little hangout spot and also fixing the road here so today we're gonna finish up we have the skid loader break down on us yesterday which is kind of a bummer but you know it's just a fact of life here on the farm sometimes stuff just breaks so what we're gonna do today I've got Steve my volunteer he's coming up he'll be here in just a little bit he's going to help us rake out and smooth over all that mulch that we put down over here on our camping fire pit area and we're going to show you how I scrape the road here I scrape the driveway so we've got humps like piles humped up all over here where the dump truck guy dumped all the rot so this rock is called so light okay it's different than regular granite stone so light rock is a little bit lighter it's a whole lot cheaper and we're putting it down to build a road base and then once we're done with the road base we'll put down the granite stone and get it packed down and build us a nice road in here but first we want to put this cheaper less expensive stuff so it packs down in there we'll give it a year or so and then we'll come and top dress it with some regular granite so come along with us today we'll show you how we scrape the road and this is the initial setup of building a new driveway so if you guys are building a new driveway at your home or at your homestead or at your farm this is a good way to do it okay and we'll talk a little bit more about that here in just a few minutes so let's get busy let's start working come on along guys we'll have some fun alright [Music] so you folks might be a little bit curious about how the deer hunt went yesterday the hunt went great me and the red beaver went up we got right behind the house there and we had a good hunt it was right before dark and like five dough's ran out and three bucks ran out chasing them and this one buck kind of walked up and he walked up on me and the funny story is I was up in the deer stand and I had to pee so bad I don't know if any of you guys are hunters but if you are a hunter I know you've been in a deer stand and you've had to pee we were working all day yesterday and I drink like four cups of water before I got in the deer stand that was a no-no so I had to pee really really bad sounds like man it's dark it's time to come down so I creep down out of the tree and went into my little shed and started peeing and then the red beaver texted me he's a deer deer deer and it was like I looked over my shoulder oh I'm peeing there's like nine deer right there behind me holy crap and the dough's all ran down the hill and this one but came up strutting and they came up so I popped him and now we have deer meat in the freezer which is awesome feed our family good times that's the way it is country boy living so I had a little surprise this morning that the red beaver left me on the back of the Gator it's that thing right there I'll turn away from it and it's the deers but he left the deers but in my gaiter red beaver so what you can't see you're getting ready to experience they're big humps so it's really difficult to see how unsmooth this really is but hope that gave you a little bit of a frame of reference as to how rough this driveway is let's get down here to the skid steer and I'll tell you what we had to do to fix it so folks I'm walking up right now and this is the pathway that we made yesterday so that we can drive the Gator down through here or have a nice little hiking trail to get down through the woods to our little spot down here that's a sweet spot that's our little camping area little hangout spot so let's talk about the skid loader and what the problem was here a little latch right here pull the latch open up and here's our engine bay our engine compartment right in here is where the problem was and this is a new fuel filter okay we had to put a new fuel filter on it and this is the second fuel filter I've had to go through oh by the way let me correct myself this is the hydraulic filter that's the oil filter and that's the fuel filter for all you folks that commented the last time I had to change the fuel filter on this the price we're running into was that the fuel filter on this thing is clogging up because this machine set for like five or six years so we got to drain the fuel tank at some point and put all new fuel in and make sure the fuel gauge is working properly and make sure we get all that water and trash out of the fuel tank so let's start scooping on that pile of wood chips right there and get busy make this place look beautiful [Music] I don't know if you can tell a difference but goal number one has been met for the day we've got this all smoothed out I've got a couple little camping spots set up over here and it's gonna be really nice Steve's finishing up raking and I'm gonna join him right here and we'll rake up some stuff and then we'll get on the gravel okay guys we're getting ready to do some tractor working as always I need to give you my tractor disclaimer this is the way I do it it might not be the way you do it but it's the way I do it so if you have constructive criticism please leave that constructive criticism if you leave sarcastic hateful or curse words I'm just going to delete them so you might as well not use them give me constructive criticism help me and make me a stronger and better person and do something you can be proud of today instead of being an insulting tractor expert thank you all right ooh so guys in case you're wondering what kind of rake we've been using this is called a landscape rake one of the most handy rakes I've ever owned okay I got it at Lowe's called a landscaping rake I'll find one online and post a link to it this is a cobalt brand so it's a lifetime warranty brand tool I just thought I'd show you this thing this thing is a hundred times better than a standard garden rake when it comes to spreading mulch or moving gravel or stuff like that around the farm so landscape break we're gonna have a permanent landscape breakdown here that way we can always rake out and clean up a spot if we want to camp where we want to burn a camp fire landscape break [Applause] [Music] now that I've gotten this pot done right here we've taken a big old pile of rock and we spread it out nice and fairly even we'll take the tractor blade and we'll back drag in the way we'll do this is we will drag the blade straight and flat over this probably five times and once we get it smooth and level and we'll turn the blade and dip it ever so slightly and go back and forth again to heap it up and basically the way you want your road or your driveway to do is you want a hump you want it to be heaped up in the middle so that water sheds off the middle and doesn't cause a gully we've got a spot up here I'll show you this spot right here is a spot for potential washing okay it's the only real spot that I've really think could wash besides the entryway and we want to make sure that's packed down nice and that it's crowned really nice so that we don't end up with a gully down through here we want to do this maybe one time a year we want to maintain this driveway so we're gonna try to do it right here so let's get started first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drag it flat let's go get the tractor [Applause] every night bring about a million so the next step we're going to do we've already drug it flat we've got a gravel smoothed out the next thing we're gonna do is we're going to turn our blade and basically we're going to turn our blade this direction and drop it ever so slightly maybe this much okay it's already set up like this and the adjuster is on this right-hand side of the track so what we'll do is we'll pull these pins out sometimes they come easy and sometimes they don't force basically take those pins out and rotate our blade ever so slightly just one notch over so what we're going to do since it's one notch over now and our blade is crooked it's gonna pull that gravel that's tipped over the edge back into the center and cause that driveway to have the crown now later on after we've driven on this quite a few times it'll develop a SAG where the tires go it's okay we'll come back over it and we'll drag it first like this we'll pull it all to the center and then we'll knock it down and then basically over the years we'll basically pull the gravel from the edge into the center and then drag it back flat pull it from the edge into the center and then drag it back flat now you can do too much of this and it can tear up your driveway okay so you can continue to dig and dig and dig and basically what's going to happen is you're going to end up down in the dirt we don't want to do that we want to maintain it properly basically every year maybe every spring every fall will drag it smooth it out and pack it down so that's it so that's what we're gonna do guys want to thank you a whole lot for joining us here on the farm I hope you've learned a little bit here we took the skid loader and we did basically all the bucket work with the skid loader I know I could do it on the tractor and I know there's a whole lot of folks out there that say all you need is a tractor with a bucket well all you need is a tractor with a bucket but the skid loader really really makes a difference in maneuverability and speed so moving that rock took about a quarter of the amount of time with the skid loader is it would have with the tractor so it's a real time-saving machine and it's not mine so it's very nice to have it on the farm here to use so building this roads been a bit of a challenge but I'm gonna say we're pretty much complete with the road here now all we got to do is just pack it down by driving on it using the road here this is gonna be our access point for the whole back side of the farm and soon guys I'll have a map posted up okay so that you'll know where we're working when we're working okay so at the beginning of most videos once I get this map built up I'll show you where we're working on the farm if it's something that's important because I know you probably don't know where the heck we're at but we're on down past the house we live on a dirt road we go past our driveway and we swing in to the right and this takes us into the back ninety acres of the farm thanks a lot for coming to join me today me and Steve Steve operating the camera today which is awesome have a good camera guy thanks a lot guys come on back and see me here on the Stoney Ridge farm I hope you learned a whole lot and I hope you come back and see me don't forget to click that like button leave me a little comment down there if you have any other ideas or suggestions and don't forget to click that little bell down there it notifies you when I post a new video thanks a lot all right woo [Music] it's country [Music] so folks you may wonder why someone would come and volunteer on a farm well I've not asked Steve this yet and this is like on the spot I'm putting him on the spot I told him I was gonna ask him some questions so what drove you here I don't know you said you like to go hiking and stuff like that you like me outdoors right why why would someone come and volunteer on the farm here it's quiet it's peaceful to get you out of your head you don't think of anything yeah other than you bossing me around yeah not bossing them around so is it fun are you having to do this that's lots of fun it's lots of like you said no how you watch the videos yeah now you see whether everything is yeah and it's a lot of fun so would you recommend to somebody to come up here and work would you like to have a buddy to work with up here so for we're all up here working if we have a workday my future plans are to start having maybe a workday once a month or something like that and everybody maybe like the first Saturday of every month and have volunteers up to come and work on the farm and come and be in the videos and come and share a part in this building of a farm and of a place to of a place to stay of a place to be of a place where you know where your food comes from and and sharing the dreams with other people I think one of the things they used to say to my wife when we first bought this place is what good is it if we can't share it so and do you feel like I'm sharing it with you you are and do you think that's worth coming up it is I love having him he's great to have it's it's always good to have a second hand on the farm for safety's sake for works sake my wife's a tiny lady she's like 5 foot 2 110 pounds so she's not lifting 50 pound feed bags and stuff like that and she's not able to move things around like having a man up here like Steve there's a place for everyone here if you want to come and volunteer on the farm guys shoot me an email I'll put you on the email list and hopefully we'll start having a farm work day sometime yeah in the next couple months we'll try to do a farm work day and snows unless it snows well if it snows there's still a lot of fun days farm fun days you know guys if you want to share in part of this and you want to come up to the farm and you want to see it and you want to visit and you want to have some fun you want to work you want to stay we're gonna build a cabin out here where folks can come and stay and enjoy themselves so hopefully the plan in the future is to have eight two or three cabins a place where you can come and camp a place where you can come and stay we want to do some music festivals up here we've got a great natural amphitheater let me show you here so this is 25 acres of amphitheater right here there's a bottom right down in there that's just flat perfect place to put a stage we'd have an awesome music festival up here guys so I just want to share my thoughts with you guys and share Steve's thoughts with you in let you know you know what Steve thinks what somebody else thinks what's their perspective is is Stoney Ridge farm real is it is it a cool place is it a great place to be is it something that you see growing do the grass grow every time I come up here grass is growing hmm guys thanks a lot come on back and see us okay see you later