We rented a tractor from a local rental shop in town and it was a great choice to help ourselves smooth out our land.
Jason and I have wanted to do this project since we moved into our home 2 years ago. We wanted to clear out the ruts that were left from when an old house, that was inhabitable, was torn down, and had to be removed before we were approved to close on our loan. What happened was the week the house was town down and removed, we also had a ton of rain which created a ton of mud in the area they were working in. This meant that ruts in the land were created. Now, the people who had done the job had said they were going to come back and smooth everything out. However, they were deeply affected by a tornado in their area within that month and although they were physically ok, they were not prepared to come back and do us the favor of smoothing out the ruts they had left. Understandable, but inconvenient.
We Rented a Tractor to Smooth Out Our Land
We bid out the job for people to come in and work on this project externally, but ultimately we decided to rent the tractor and do the work to smooth out our land ourselves. We chose this for two reasons. One was cost and two was the type of projects we wanted completed.
The first project that we did (Jason did) was that he smoothed out the section of property affected by the work completed two years ago. Jason also filled in a ton of holes that were left that were fairly dangerous because you wouldn’t know they were there until you stepped in them and about twisted your ankle. The other HUGE reason this needed to get done was because mowing this section of grass was a nightmare. We have a riding lawn mower, and this was hard on the mower and our bodies because you got jostled so much. So, though it may not appear to have been a huge change. This is in fact a huge improvement to our lives for this coming summer. Also, the area surrounding where the house foundation was is so much cleaner and nicer and we have now expanded that movable area quite a bit.
The second major project we need done with our rented tractor, was to fix a flooding issue we have had. We live on 5 acres and some of the property sits higher than others. The land that our kids play in the backyard is lower and the land that our pond sits on is higher. This past year the city added a covert to have water that ran off from the street next to our pond divert and flow into our land which then created a flooding issue into our backyard because all that new water ran down hill towards our children’s play set. This area was already a bit sloppy after a rain and the ground became too saturated with the extra water that we now had running off from the street from a higher elevation.
This extra water will be a great thing for us when we expand our pond, which we plan on doing in the next 5 years. So this large amount of extra water from a rain is really only an issue for us right now until that pond expansion project can take place.
Jason decided to create a large channel to divert the water away from the slope that runs down into the backyard towards our house. So far this has been a great things for us and have already seen an improvement in this from our most recent rain after having had done this.
What we will do to fix any ruts that may have been left from ourselves using the tractor is we have a tiller and will till up the small section that needs it to be smoothed out again.
Check out our video showing the process of how We Rented A Tractor to Smooth Out Our Land
All in all deciding to rent a tractor and smoothing out our land ourselves was a really fun project and was really like a pivotal moment. We have wanted to get this done for 2 years and boom here it is done in Spring ready for Summer.
It feels pretty cool to be working on these Spring projects in preparation for the rest of the year. You know, we watched so many shows of other people doing these things and racing against the clock to get these things done during a window of time and this year we get to play in that same sandbox and it feels really amazing.
If you enjoyed this read here are a few other stories I have written that may interest you:
I hope you all are are having a wonderful Spring so far and I can’t wait to share more of what we have been up to out here in Southeastern Oklahoma <3