Building the driveway

Perhaps the single most valuable reason to have purchased the tractor is for road construction.  Being a small-ish machine, it requires a lot of passes to fully work and shape the dirt, but it sure beats paying thousands to some shady landscaper for possibly shoddy work.

First, you have to clear the corridor, including all the stumps.  It helps to have friends - big thanks again to Tim, Ron, Gabe and Jeff!

The driveway will go through here.

Our architect Steven drafted a real nice site plan that I could show township and county officials.

It's a pretty long way back to the home site!  Driveway is probably about 1000 feet long, in total.  Oy.

Lots to do yet

Taking shape!

By mid 2014, it was really time to get serious.

Pulled a ditch on the high side

Which leads to this small retention pond (this was after 2" of rain, and was drained by the next afternoon)

First gravel truck pulling in.

Well that didn't go nearly far enough.  Dangit.

Plan B!  Borrow Mr. Redoy's truck, and neighbor Bob's dump trailer.  2-3 yds at a time from local gravel pit was slow going, but got the job done.  Mostly.  Sort of.  The entirety of the driveway will probably end up needing some 250-300 TONS of stone by the time it's all said and done.

After day 1 of stone work.

So it's actually 1-3" recycled, crushed concrete, not stone.

Eventually I'd had enough, and the driveway was deemed serviceable, haha.  So far, so good-ish.  Is that a port-a-john?  Waaaaattt?