Rookie needs advice to level a field

What would I need for my Ford 860 in the way of implements and where would I look for the best methods to use?

If it looks like it's a 24" drop, chance are it's a lot more. See if you can borrow a transit or level to check it out. When you actually start leveling, a handy tool is a "hand level"; I think you can buy them at Home Depot. Make yourself a couple of pointed sticks about five feet long and mark them every six inches. When you want to check how you're doing, stick one in the ground and hold your level against a mark on the other one.

Get your self a 2 bottom plow, a good cutting 7' disk and a land leveler. The land leveler can be as simple as 3/8x4x4 angle iron welded in a grid 7' x 10', drag it by chain behind your tractor after disking.

Sometimes simple is best.

Rod

He wanted us to disk his standing blueberries right after harvest, then he said I've got something for you to hook unto and do leveling. I didn't go myself, however when the operator got home, he told me of pulling this 20' long 18" web I beam crossways behind the skidder on the logging winch cable. He said they asked him to adjust the length of cable depending how well the I beam was cutting. My operator thought we should have one, never did do that little project.

Apparently it didn't do what they wanted on blueberries. I asked the son later, and he told me the I beam did excellent levelling, no question about that. They were hoping it would spread blueberry plants helping to fill in the field. The I beam actually did just the opposite, dumped all the blueberry plants in the hollows. So much for one of the old man's good ideas was all he could say. He figured it sat blueberry production on that field back 20 years.

If you have reasonably small cuts and fills, you could do it with that tractor and a box blade, but not while it's in sod. If those cuts and fills are substantial, might be easier to strip the top in the affected areas and import some good clean natural fill material, lot easier to work with and grade than lumpy sod root bound clumps, then let the top soil rot a little like mentioned above.

You could make a mess both with and without a dozer, one of our fields is like that, but the hills are shale, they are not worth fooling with. My food plot was really unlevel, I turned it, disc'd a few times, then took all the sod clumps and put em in the low areas, used the front end loader like a dozer and shaved a little here and there, not perfect but much better, little more work and it will drain off, no more soft areas with trapped water.

I'm not sure how a tiller handles on one of those 860's, if you just want to skim here and there, you have to loosen up the sod layer, and use some care in thinking about what you are doing, strip to much top in one area and nothing good will grow, that is what happens here when you take off the top, it's like the next layer is almost inert.

Sometimes it might be best left alone, lot of work involved, that 860 will get some use that is for sure.

Once you have the soil loosened up (with either a disk or chisel), one of those would do just what you are needing...

Howard

A tractor is a poor machine to use for a job like this.

Buttttt tt. The guys that have come over to doze my ponds have done just that. They remove the existing vegetation, push it out of the way, and when the excavation is finished, they put it back on top. Really helps to get ground coverage going.

Yes, I know that by removing the existing grass they reduce the opportunity for leaks to occur between old elevation and new dirt....but it's nice of them to do it anyway. Grin

Mark