It's Amazing what you can Accomplish with a Box Blade

hey it's brock here with rock hill farms and today we're out here to work on this leaky pond dam again now i have a series of solutions i'm going to implement to try to fix this leaky dam but in the meantime i want to do something to help my neighbor out because the property line runs right down this dam and that little red barn there is his so when this dam leaks pushes water over to where he keeps his horse over here and causes him a problem so what we're doing today is basically in case my other plans for the pond don't work or until they work we want to manage the water on his side so anything that does leak through the dam or over the dam runs off down this way and into a creek so let me show you his side of the property okay so now we're looking right down the fence that separates the property line you can see the pond the dam and where it slopes off now if we can just take any water that comes through start at that red barn there and run it down and just make a trench or a swale that runs down this way and when you look over here you run it down to where this pipe fence is and just on the other side of that pipe fence you have a swale that runs down to an actual creek over there so if i can just push all the water that comes through the dam into that creek will be good so i start off just clearing everything with the brush cutter so that i could see exactly what i was dealing with and what the terrain was like [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so the neighbor asked for a trench here that would divert the water and if you follow the channel you know i've got about a dozen ways i can make a trench including an actual trencher on the skid steer so you might be wondering what i'm doing over here with a box blade well one answer is i like to try different things but there's a couple more solid answers number one he's got a 26 year old horse that lives in this area and i don't want a trench that has straight drop off it could be a trip hazard also he's got to mow this area back here i assume he uses a brush cutter for that and i started thinking it would be better to have a swale instead of a straight trench and even digging a swale i had a couple of different options but if you notice i don't have a lot of room in between [Music] the pond bank and the building or between the pond bank and this cluster of trees up at the front so i decided that the box blade with the tilt kit might be the best way to do it this is the kind of job where the tilt cylinder really earns its keep because this would be quite difficult to do without it to get this angle i had to switch the tilt cylinder onto the opposite side of where i normally put it and with the manual adjustment it would have just taken forever to get this steep of an angle and then for other parts of it i had to reverse this angle so it's a real time saver [Music] with the box blade pitched at such an extreme angle it was really aggressive at cutting but it would only cut for a few feet before it filled up that side and started spilling dirt under the other side that wasn't touching the ground the result is it took a lot of passes and it was a little bit more difficult to actually have this on grade but the other result is it really made a nice crown right in the center of the tractor where the desired effect being a low spot on the right side of where you see me working right now is definitely being accomplished but there's some other negatives to what i decided to do here and i'm hoping it doesn't come back to bite me [Music] [Applause] [Music] so when i'm doing any kind of work like this i'm constantly grading myself in at least two different categories number one is am i accomplishing what i set out to accomplish in this case i wanted a swale that was deeper on what is currently the right side of this video and i wanted that to have consistent fall from one end to the other and i feel like by the end i had done a good job of accomplishing that goal the second way i'm grading myself is was it the right plan and that's the part i'm not sure on because this will cause water to drain from up by the barn down into this trench and out to his creek the only problem is that what we're looking for a solution to is a leaky dam and by cutting out the bottom of this slope it could actually make the dam leak worse i don't think so but it is a concern and it's something that was just on my mind while i was doing the work the biggest hassle to actually finishing this project is that you can only go so far with the box blade when the front of the tractor is running into that pipe fence so the last 12 or 15 feet had to be managed with the bucket and that worked but it was a little bit slower i also tried reversing the angle on the box blade and pushing back for this lower section and i had mixed results on that strategy i worked on this right up until sunset so i didn't get a chance to sign the video off like i normally do but i do appreciate you taking time to watch you should see links on the screen to a couple more of our videos and i'll see you next time

Channel: Rockhill farm

Views: 165,662

Keywords: John Deere, farm vlog, homestead, outdoorgans, 2038R, 325G, pond update, pond dam leak, digging a swale, digging a swale with a box blade, how to dig a swale

Id: SOx9y1qgx7o

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 23 2022