With a big enough tractor...
After five months stuck in the mud of the floodplain, our truck is finally free!
Our movie-star neighbor deserves a medal for knowing just how to use a
long cable with a tree as a fulcrum point to yank out the truck on the
other side of a bend without getting bogged down in the muck. Plus, his
tractor just happens to be almost-but-not-quite-too-big to go up the
ford --- what luck!
A short chain and a long
cable turned out to be the perfect attachment for full-frontal pulling. I
think I'm doing a yoga position in this photo --- perhaps Stuck Truck
Warrior?
No, Mark, you can't pull
the truck out all by yourself. (Actually, Mark's testing the chain in
this photo to make sure it's hooked in properly.)
I'll admit up front that
Mark and I were both dubious of our neighbor's choice of days. I mean,
look at the driveway --- it was wetter than ever. Shouldn't we wait
until the deep freeze, at least?
"Nope," our neighbor
replied. He kept the tractor in the (semi-)dry, then let a long cable
rub up against a tree at the curve. With Mark steering the truck and our
neighbor driving the tractor, our mud-encrusted vehicle was yanked free
in no time. The diciest part of the whole endeavor was the way Lucy
kept trying to jump up into the moving truck in search of a mouse that
had taken up residence under the hood.
Here's where I admit that
our neighbor was 100% right and we were 100% wrong. We owe you one,
Frankie! I'll never doubt you again.
Of
course, this doesn't mean we have two vehicles on the road once again.
Frankie actually pulled the truck another mile down the road to our
other neighbor's garage since the truck no longer wants to run after you
get the engine going. Surprise, surprise --- five months in a swamp
wasn't good for the truck's moving parts.
But we're thrilled
anyway. Not seeing the truck sunk nearly up to its axles as we walk past
will make us much happier on a daily basis. And today also marked the
day when yet another neighbor (this time the one who gave us our trailer
many moons ago) dropped by to scope out the possibility of carving a
non-swampy driveway into the side of our hill. More details on that
potential project in a later post.
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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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use brute force.
Not always the best option, I'll admit. And it does pay to use your brain first and brawn later. But in cases like these...
I hope you'll be able to get a better driveway, seeing how the current swamp has claimed one of your transports and damaged two others.
Have you considered getting a UNIMOG??? Half truck, half tractor and all Mercedes so even a movie star could be seen in one.