The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Stump hump

truck is stuck due to stump in the way


It sure was easy to back up over this stump, but now it's causing some problems when we try to get back over it.

We thought waiting for the ground to freeze might make things solid enough for an escape, but it still just spins in place.

The next attempt will involve trying to use a hand winch to get over the hump, which sounds like a good title for a country western song if I could just think of something catchy that rhymed with winch.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Wedging a piece of plywood between the wheel and the stump might help.

But I'm thinking that a pickup truck might not be the ideal vehicle for your farm?

An old-style "series" Landrover (or maybe a Toyota Landcruiser) might serve better. With the 4x4 drive, low/high gearing and optional high air intake, a series landrover would have little trouble with your creek, even if the water was up to the bonnet. The older models with a Diesel engine with a mechanical Bosch fuel pump will even run on straight vegetable oil. Also, the Landrover has a light aluminium body that doesn't rust.

Of course all these old 4x4s are about as aerodynamic as a brick, but for use on and around the farm that won't matter much.

Comment by Roland_Smith Tue Jan 11 16:40:34 2011
Maybe that'll help you out...
Comment by anna Tue Jan 11 16:45:00 2011
We certainly don't want to give up the truck --- she's served us quite well! What we love is the huge bed, which makes it easy for Mark to pick up over a ton of compost or mulch for me in one trip (very important since we live so far from anything.) Even if we had to move things over to the golf cart to shuttle them in to the trailer, it would be worth it to get that big bed and cut down the number of trips to town. We're just learning the truck's abilities so that we can work around them.
Comment by anna Tue Jan 11 16:48:13 2011

You've got firewood and kindling. Just pack some pieces in front and back of the tires to give more traction. You may have to do it more than once but it should come right out. You might have to dig just a bit to lay the pieces across the tread.

Some stone from the creek might help instead but the sharper the better, none slick and smooth, nor very large.

Comment by vester Tue Jan 11 19:32:25 2011
Mark uses seconds cinder blocks, which we get quite cheap from the block plant down the road. He breaks up a few in situations like this when he needs emergency gravel, and the pieces work extremely well, much less slick than muddy firewood gets. You can see the cinder blocks behind the wheel in the previous post Mark made about the truck.
Comment by anna Wed Jan 12 09:18:18 2011





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