12/22/07 - The combination of drought and high traffic really took a toll on my grass this year.  In order to get from my back pasture or my barn to by driveway or front yard I have to drive across my backyard.  Needless to say by the end of the summer I had all sorts of tracks across my backyard.  As a result I decide that I would extend my driveway to the back of my property.  This would allow me to gain access to my back pasture, the rear of my barn as well as where I park my tractor, pick up and trailers.  In order to make this viable I needed to relocate  the current gate leading to the rear pasture.  The gate was moved to the back of the property, along the fence line where the driveway extension would eventually lead.

                                         Original Location . . .                                                                                         New Location . . .

Relocating gates and fence post are never quite as swapping a gate and a couple of fence post and the fence boards the go along with it.  There is always some cutting of old boards, measuring of new boards and of course adjusting of everything in between to get things to work out.  As a result after moving this gate I had a about a 6 foot opening left between the last fence post and the edge of the barn.  Instead of gutting a few short 4 or 5 foot lengths and of fence to use for a short section of fence, I decided to install a four foot gate.  This would serve strictly for access to the pastures rather than having to hop the fence or go through the barn to get into the pasture.

                                                                                 4ft. gate installed for pasture access . . .

12/29/07 - Having got the gates moved the week before we were ready to move forward with the driveway extension.  We first staked the outline at about 9ft. width . . . which is the same width as our current paved driveway.  This allowed us to see exactly how direction the driveway extension would look once the digging started.  After we were satisfied with the layout I started in with the removal of a small lattice fence that the previous owner had installed to hide a garden.  I had purchased a tooth bar for my tractor especially for this project and it was easily money well spent.  It made digging out fence post and hard pack soil very easy.

                    Notice the teeth on the bucket . . .                                                     Teeth allow me to dig post right out of the ground . . .

                                                                                                    No more fence . . .

With the fence out of the way I could start cutting the road.  Again, the tooth bar was worth it's weight in gold.  It gave my AG tractor near skid loader capability.  I was able to move levels of material that would have been impossible with a flat front bucket.

From the pictures you can see that the tooth bucket did the "heavy" work and the rear blade was used to do most of the clean up work.  They worked out to be quite and effective combination.  After the a few hours of work during the first day I was able to get about half of the "rough" work done.  I was pretty happy with how it was looking.  I can't imagine how much a contractor would charge me do it.  We aren't going to pave it just yet since I would end up just tearing it up with the trucks and heavy equipment so for now it will just get some gravel and stone dust to lock the gravel in place.

                View after day 1, from the driveway . . .                                                        View after day 1, from the backyard . . .

12/30/07  - Day two I wanted to finish the rough cut and I try to clean up the edges a bit to get the overall width out to 9ft.  We were supposed to get rain so I start out early in the morning hoping to beat the weather.  I needed to cut the rest of the road from aprox. the middle of the yard down to the gate which included a fairly sharp turn and along with a significant elevation change.  It would be interesting to see how the tooth bar worked digging down into the deep clay like dirt.

           The turn leading down to the back pasture . . .                                                    Looking back towards the driveway . . .

                    4x4 set in concrete, no problem . . .                                                           New teeth gave the DK new abilities . . .

Next step is the clean up the edges most likely with a shovel . . . I want to get some of the loose dirt that has been pushed up on the sides moved out of the way and square of the edges in order to make as much of a "lip" as possible to help contain the gravel when I start spreading it.  I am still trying to determine how many loads of gravel I am going to need based on my last project.  My estimating skills are less than stellar but using the largest truck that they used last time I am thinking three . . .?