April 5, 2007

ell, you know how I said yesterday I was going to be a domestic housewife for once and devote the rest of my afternoon to the bathroom and livingroom? Well, it is things like this which make my good intentions go astray...

My darling came into the house, grabbed the phone, went outside and called someone. That is not unusual. Then he pops he head back in the door and tells me to follow him and to bring my camera, that was unusual. 

This is the first scene I saw as we walked halfway to the back of the property.. the bulldozer was stuck in a deep icy hole. It was once a pit dug before we moved here. It holds water most of the year and the horses drink out of it in the summer. But the ice and snows covered it and my boyfriend did not realize he was on top of it with the Cat. 

Picture Above: Completely sunk in the hole. We cannot even see the winch. We had to dig under the logs to get a chain under to use the tractor to lift the logs to get the choker undone. It was not quite as easy as it sounds. And I failed to bring my new gloves from the house. See the ice?

Picture Above: A can of soda shows how thick the ice is. This is what the Cat broke through and fell into the deep hole.

Picture Above: I think we are on "Plan F" by now. But at least you can see the winch now. There was too much ice and slick clay and the Cat could not get purchase on anything to climb in either direction. It did not help that it was up against a tree on the "driver's side" as well.

Picture Above: After "Plans A-J" failed miserably, then a broken chain, "Plan K" came about which was me finally allowed to drive the Cat while he was in the tractor, (I told him it was a poor time to get me reacquainted with working a Cat after  7 years of not running one) then pulling him backwards in the tractor..... and alot more thinking, "Plan L" (I think) is how we got the Cat finally out, by triple chaining the winch to a tree to the right side and well forward of the Cat, the winch cable was going "clunk, clunk, clunk.." over the right track, which I cringed over and then finally chaining the blade to another tree and using the hydraulics to keep in place as we/he gained out of the hole.

Picture Above:  Curious to see how deep this hole was, a branch was stuck into the hole in various spots. The deepest part was the back left corner was at least 34" deep. See the ice which was one of the problems of not being able to get out next to my guy's left foot?

It took about 2-3 hours to get the bulldozer out and he brought up the logs to the log yard, turned off the Cat and then came into the house and announced we shall be having Chinese Food take-out for dinner. We had no kids and so it was a rare day and evening we had to ourselves.