spandit

Great stuff, thanks

My field needs topping/mowing and a chap down the road has just bought a tractor and flail. I'm not expecting him to do it for free but wondered what the going rate might be as there are other landowners locally without enough land to justify buying a tractor and it could be a good little money earner for him

Bought a couple of Wartec chains for my Stihl MS181 as they were only cheap and wanted to see how they compared to the genuine Stihl chain I had. First impressions pretty good - certainly sharp and fitted fine. Whether it will last that long or not, I don't know but it got through a lot of logs today that my Stihl was struggling with (admittedly, it's not a new chain and my sharpening file is a bit blunt, I think)

You're not aware of the meme here then? There seems to be an unwritten rule that someone must declare "hornbeam" in any identification question. Stems from an old thread. I know it's not really a hornbeam

Hornbeam

There was some TPO'd woodland sold near me recently. Spoke to one of the owners and he said they just needed to submit a management plan to the council, rather than just chopping down willy-nilly. I'm sure you'll be fine getting permission even though it's a pain submitting the forms

Let me know when you get your PhD (post hole digger)...

I'll let nature take its course... quite surprised the alder made it at all with the leaf coverage from the birch.

Mystery solved with one of them - it was planted as an alder but a birch has grown through the same tube - it's about 8' tall now...

His work yard is next door but we're on pretty good terms. Might not even happen this year but it needs to in order to control a lot of the water that is otherwise flowing down where we don't want it

Won't ever know which one I am until I try! I'll be hiring one through the landscaper next door & he's seen me operate the smaller digger. I know some of you think I'm just some bloke who thinks he's the world's best digger driver after 2 days but I'm pretty realistic in what I think I can achieve & doing a lot of planning work before the bucket will hit the mud! Sorry if I've rubbed some up the wrong way - the Internet isn't always the best medium to communicate on but thank you to all the genuinely useful advice

Thank you! Think we were posting at the same time...

Fair points all but I'll never get any better without experience. I will be hiring out a small digger sooner to dig some ditches and I'll be practicing some grading with that too. I'm not expecting to be perfect straight off the bat but as I've said before, I have a professional who will be around to help/guide. Would rather achieve something myself rather than just buying it in

I think we're talking about the same point. In the same way that I wouldn't hire a tree surgeon to cross cut some logs, I feel I can do the big digging myself, learning all the way. For the fiddly, precision stuff, I can get an experienced operator in - there is a professional landscaper next door. You seem to assume I have no respect for anyone and yet you judge my abilities without having seen me operate machinery. As you say, it's my money, which isn't unlimited, and doing a load myself of the less challenging work, will save a fair bit which means I can spend more on the details

I have an experienced digger operator next door who can come in for a bit to do the fiddly bits. The bulk digging is the easy part and apologies to those with degrees in excavation but I'm confident that I can do a decent enough job. Have to learn somehow anyway and if my calculations are correct, it's going to take a long time for the lakes to fill up! Thanks for the idea regarding the fuelling. I'll ask around...

Worth bearing in mind, thought 15 tonnes was big enough!

I am the customer! I'd be leaving the drums elsewhere on the property, on a hard standing, so I could drive the digger to them. It's creating a new lake so no marine wildlife to damage, although you're right in as much that I don't want loads of diesel spread over the ground

Ah, that's an idea. Thanks.

Some local petrol stations sell it

Following on from my exploits with a small digger, at some stage I'll be hiring a 15-tonne machine to dig out some proper lakes. The little Kubota had a 33l tank and I can pick up 30l containers of red to pour in, it used one a day. Now, the big machines have a much bigger tank and thirst - is it just a case of getting more 30l containers or do folks hire in fuel bowsers to keep them running? I've been told I'll need it for about 9 days

Paid the landscaper today. He said that he wouldn't have left me alone with the digger if I hadn't been proficient in using it and says that for digging my big lakes I'll be fine with a big digger - saves me quite a bit of dosh! He can be around for the fiddly bits if I need him but definitely going to hire a digger to finish digging the ditches and possibly deepen the pond a bit...

The spring outlet is putting out about 100litres an hour. I reckon the other spring I bisected has a similar output so should be getting 200l an hour into the ditch once the pond fills up and overflows into the pipe. The ditch will then be dammed (or be damned!) and the overflow will go into two larger ponds/lakes that will be dug in the future where it's very wet already (more springs). These should contain a lot of the water that is making the field below boggy and be a nice feature

After I'd dug it by hand. The foam is DOC Since then, I'd put some plants in, from another pond that we've now filled in. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have any pictures but here is what it was like just after I drained the water out (I'd installed a drain point and it's up on a hill) Set to work with the digger The contractor puddled the dam As of this morning, it was about 10" deep, as my furry depth gauges illustrate: The spring outlet is now above the water line so it won't back up like before. The plastic pipe in the picture above leads to a ditch 60m away. I intersected another spring and it's already flowing Wide angle shot: The old, hand dug, pond had banks around it where I'd piled the spoil up. The rebuilt one is flush to the landscape as the spoil has been spread around. It was so wet that difficult to do much with but once it dries out we'll probably be able to get a machine up there to smooth it a bit. Need to scatter some grass seed, I think, to get things going but will probably plant some more trees. Had to destroy a willow that was growing there but it will probably resprout from what's left of the roots and I'm sure many more will naturally reseed there. Will be interesting to see how the trees that were downhill of it will adapt to lower water levels. Hopefully they've been in long enough to have reasonable root systems and I'm sure it will still be pretty damp up there

Had a pond that I'd dug by hand but it wasn't lined and was leaking (didn't actually have a proper outlet and it was spring fed) so finally got a local contractor in to rebuild it. He was happy for me to use the brand new Kubota U27-4 digger and gave me some pointers on how to use it effectively. After two days I was getting reasonably proficient with it - it went home yesterday and I'm gutted as have so much more I want to do! Made a hell of a mess, mind, but once the gloop we pulled out of the pond dries up & the vegetation grows again, it should make for a much more pleasant environment - can see the improvements already downhill - one of the new trees that was in standing water now isn't

Be careful when you move the logs as mould can be quite hazardous if you breath it in. I think with better airflow the logs will dry out enough to stop mould growing