Buildings,  Machinery

Bartering Skidsteer Hours for Firewood

Ever use the barter system? If not, you are missing out. Living in a small community people often barter for services. Case in point, we saw an ad for local firewood that sounded too good to pass up and after contacting the owner, turns out it was someone we knew. See, we have enough firewood for this coming winter but would really like to have a head start for next winter so we don’t have to scramble in the spring.

firewood
Hardwood for firewood

We met with him to check out the firewood and it would seem he needed some gravel spread at a new large workshop he is building. See how that works. No money trades hands. Just a bit of manual labour.

I made the mistake of asking Jim if there was anything I could do to help. Sure he said. I could hold up the stick so we would make sure the gravel was level. Sounded easy enough. As I was getting in the truck to head out, he mentioned I should bring the rake and shovel. What!?

First we had to get the skidsteer loaded onto the trailer at home.

skidsteer,trailer
Tightening the chains

Then we headed out, only about 15 minutes away, to the location. Once we got there we unloaded and got to work.

skidsteer,trailer
Removing the chains
skidsteer,trailer
Backing off the trailer

Here was the pile of gravel we had to move into the building and level out to get ready for concrete to be poured.

skidsteer,moving dirt,trailer
Three dump loads of dirt

We started by the door and worked our way around the perimeter of the building.  While Jim moved the dirt, I raked it out to the edges and he used the bucket to level out towards the center.

My job was to hold the stick up to the truss of the building and when the end of the stick was touching the dirt, we were golden.

skidsteer,moving dirt
Checking for level

Meanwhile, Jim spread some gravel down the middle.

skidsteer
Spreading the dirt

Then he would drag the bucket over it to flatten it out.

skidsteer
Packing it down

With the bit of stone left over, we spread it out around where the garage door will go.

skidsteer
Still spreading…

And here is the result after 2 1/2 hours of work.

garage
All finished

Oh don’t I wish this was our new building. Wouldn’t it be awesome. Just think of the things you could do with it. I’d make one end a new workshop and the other end would be for equipment. There are 2 big garage doors, one on the front and another on the side.

Next up is getting the firewood cut, split and brought home. Don’t think we can barter our way out of that one.

Later

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