Christmas Eve and Playing With My Christmas Toy

Monday December 25, 2023 Guerneville CA.

Christmas eve

I had a nice visit and dinner over at Barry’s place. Lots of good eats.  We had a good time.

Eggs

I got today started by collecting the eggs from my chickens.

I let the other chickens out to graze in the new grass coming up.

Blades

I wanted to change blades on my Skiddy, the track steer. A commenter suggested I name the new machine, thus Skiddy.

I removed the bucket and parked it here by my welder.

Hook

I parked it near my welder as I wanted to add a hook to hook a chain to when I needed to lift something. I checked out the hook placement but didn’t get it welded up today.

Then I put the six way blade on Skiddy. It’s fairly easy to change the blades.

I fueled and greased Skiddy and took off for the hills to do a bit of work, a, I mean played with  my new Christmas toy.

This is the road I traveled up heading for the top.

I  made it to the ridge top and continued on up the hill.

One of the things I needed to fix is this ditch that is starting when it rains hard. Water is washing down the road instead of flowing off it and starting to cause some damage, also known as erosion.

Pad repairs

But first I went to the top and fixed this turn around pad that the forest fire guys had messed up and left big piles of dirt on. I just had to level out the piles of dirt they left on it so now one could turn around as this was the end of the road.

I then went back and fixed the ditch that was developing on the road below, so now that’s fixed.

Boo boo

On the way back down the hill going back to my place just before dark, I was traveling along when a big redwood limb about three inches in diameter came into Skiddy’s cab when I ran over it and broke the mirror. Better the mirror than me. I have a backup camera so haven’t got into using the mirror yet, but I’ll get a new one soon.

Old tales

Having sticks come into the cab is one of the more dangerous things that can happen to a tractor operator in the forest. Old timers used to tell tales of finding an operator pinned to his seat. Not a good thought.

Nice day.