It's no secret that I'm an easy target for the classic stuff. In my opinion, the vintage equipment has more...soul, if that's the right word to use. The new stuff is great, but it's got all these bells and whistles that look like something to take you to the moon.
I would really love to have a crawler loader on ModHub. Something like a CASE 850 or 855D (pictured). I'm on PS4 and right now, the only option we have (that I can tell) is the NMC D11 dozer. Don't get me wrong, the D11's great, it's a beast, I get a lot of use out of it (it's been featured on my thread), but its size makes storage a challenge.
I will also freely admit that heavy equipment was my first love before journalism. When I was a kid, my mother would take me to construction sites and I would watch them work while she read the newspaper. Even when I go shopping on occasion, I found myself checking out the construction toys.
I know there's some crawler dozers on ModHub (and some in development), but as of yet I haven't seen any with a front loader attachment. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough either, lol.
Just a little thinking out loud.
Last edited by Spunky_Dogg on Sun Sep 27, 2020 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Man, I saw your #TalesOfTheHarvest right after I finished my canola harvest on FSN. I'll definitely have some pictures of the upcoming corn harvest though. Great thread, I'm subscribed and enjoying the read
Dairy farmer, college student, part-time modder, always looking to drive a tractor
Thank you! Please share. I just finished my corn harvest too, but in the words of Billy Mays "But wait, there's more!" I still have to finish soybeans and oats. Perhaps choosing to do six crops this year (plus cows) was a bit more than I could chew, lol.
It's now mid (nearly late) Autumn here at Spunky Dogg Logging and the weather is definitely turning colder. Temperatures with a "3" as the first digit are beginning to pop up in the long-range forecast, meaning it's a race to get the final fall-related tasks complete before we turn our attention to logging for the winter months.
The final load of hay from Spitler's Knoll has been baled and stored for the winter. Hopefully the cows will be happy. We've got two very pregnant cows (four months left until birth) and two sorta-pregnant cows (seven months left to birth). We are definitely looking forward to milk production in the new year.
This fall also has seen the departure of two beloved pieces of equipment. The D-11 dozer, which has faithfully served us, was sold so that we could purchase other needed pieces of equipment and our yearly logging tract. This year we will be logging across the street from a site we logged two years ago, so familiarity is a bonus.
Unlike Spitler's Knoll, we have no plans to keep this tract at this time. It will be cleared, seeded with grass and new trees planted so that we may revisit the site in the future if time and finances allow.
We also said goodbye to our mower, AKA "Trusty Rusty." Rusty has been our mower for the three years we've been in existence and while he's essentially a mini-harvester, there's some challenging geography of our property where it's tough for him to go.
In his place, we have purchased a new John Deere batwing mower that has a greater width and lower cost of maintenance. Although it's an interesting color combination to see a Case tractor pulling a John Deere.
That's all for now. We should be logging (or getting ready to) by my next update.
As always, thanks for reading and see you up the road!
Winter has arrived and we are at the Dogleg site, which as I mentioned in my previous post is across the street from the site we logged two winters ago. And guess what showed up on the first day of winter? Snow. The earliest snow we've had in the three years of our existence.
Not just snow, but all-day snow with the temperature a few degrees below freezing and a 17 mph wind. Snow that seems to get everywhere and messes with men and equipment alike.
In other Spunky Dogg Logging news, we are three months away from our first calf. I'll probably be selling some of our beef cattle later this winter, but overall things are progressing how they should be.
We are in late winter now on the Dogleg site, beginning our final push to finish this tract before spring. In the three years thus far of our existence, we've never not finished on time.
A lot's happened since our last update. A neighbor let us borrow their John Deere swing loader (which you can see in one of the screenshots) for a day and while it's a nice machine, it's a little bit big for our operation.
We also seem to have stumbled onto something in using a roll-off dumpster to transport logs to the mill. We've been able to fit 25 6-foot logs into one of them and while we could have pushed it a little in adding one or two more, 25 is a nice, round number for us.
We've discovered there are some advantages to using a roll-off instead of a standard logging trailer. It cuts down on the amount of time arranging the logs so they fit right and we don't have to worry about them sliding off the side either.
Basically, the loader drops them in and the logs kinda arrange themselves like a pack of sardines. After we saw how well it worked out, we got rid of our logging trailer.
In other Spunky Dogg news, one of our cows is only a month away from giving birth and two more are in the homestretch. As I've mentioned before, milk production will be a new thing for us in the new year.
That's all for now. Enjoy the screenshots and see you up the road!
- Spunky
I have a bit of bad news to bring to you this morning. Something happened to my game save. It loads fine, but then I get stuck in my house. The screen is dark (I can see the outline of the bed, but that's it) and I can hear environment sounds, but I can't move and none of the buttons does anything. I don't know if it was a mod I downloaded or maybe it saved wrong, or whatever, but after 308 hours invested in New Woodside, it appears I have to start over.
But, this cloud has a silver lining in that you all get to hear the Spunky Dogg Logging story from the beginning this time. Back when it was just a truck, a trailer, a skidsteer and two logging attachments. Expect the first update today on a new map.
Like every good origin story, sometimes the next telling is even better
Here I am as a fresh-faced 27-year-old out to make his mark on the world.
Blessed with a million dollars' worth of cash in my pocket accumulated through a combination of my life savings, borrowing from friends and family and my late father's inheritance, I find myself on a lonely dirt road in the shadow of the Missouri Ozarks with nothing but a truck, a trailer and a 1980s skidsteer rescued off my grandfather's farm.
There's something exhilarating about the unknown. The chance to see if you've got the chops to make it on your own. I'd purchased a $85,000 tract with an abandoned house and sawmill, leftovers from the previous chap "who just couldn't hack it," as Old Man McConley said at closing.
On paper, the site was ideal. Access to a nearby lake would provide water for livestock and there was amble timber for logging. Even the house wasn't bad, sitting on a flat spot of ground overlooking the lake.
But, it was remote. VERY remote. So remote I had to fend off a bear on my initial walk-through of the property. Long drives for fuel and equipment would mean my operation would have to be self-sufficient, or as close to that as possible.
This, as the townsfolk like to say, is "No Man's Land." (thank you ALiEN JiM)
Time will only tell what my future is here, but my gut feeling is I'm where I belong.
Grind, grind, grind, that's what the past three days have been. Logs to cut, fields to plow and buildings to build. I leased a excavator/buncher combo to help me with the heavy stuff, using the skidsteer to pile up logs along the sawmill.
Things are beginning to take shape. There's some good ground on a hill alongside the lake, so I've begun clearing trees to build a silo and potentially a barn. I've plowed the lone field on the property, which was overgrown with weeds when I arrived, and planted soybeans with a used tractor I bought at a nearby auction.
It just feels like the list of things to do is endless, but so are the possibilities. Most of the surrounding area is virgin ground, untouched by the hand of man. I've noticed nature has its own soundtrack, from the hammering of woodpeckers to the crickets at night and the occasional wolf howl.
But it's still a fight. A fight to get where I want to be. I know the 14-hour days in the brush will all be worth it in the end.
The days continue to fly by, but the Spunky Dogg Logging operation is beginning to take shape. Thanks in part to a recent wood sale, which netted me nearly $65,000, I was able to purchase a used track hoe and an old Russian military vehicle at auction.
I continue to attack some of the wooded areas around the main campsite and have also upgraded some of the roads with gravel. I also continue to work on the hill next to the lake and have shaved out an area for...something.
So my question to you, the readers, is what should I place here? A barn? A shed? Should I dig up the gravel and make it a field instead? Post your opinions in the comments.
We're halfway through Spring now and experienced our first thunderstorm on the frontier. For now, at least, log and woodchip sales are our primary source of income. We have planted barley behind the sawmill, giving us two crops (oats being the other) to plan for this fall.
Well I would say for realism’s sake I would put a barn or a shed because if you put down gravel for a pad like that they probably would have (or should have) stripped the black dirt off.
As you can see above, I've been doing a little landscaping lately, which included a concrete causeway out to the island (which doesn't have a name yet, but I'm taking suggestions). I've got plans for the island, which I'm not ready to release just yet
In other Spunky Dogg Logging news, we cleared out some more trees for a new soybean field close to the lake. One of my next screenshots will be my PDA as it stands now, so you all can see where things are at thus far. The last screenshot is what happens when you're too lazy to get the equipment back out to deal with just two small trees, lol.
We are in late spring now and I'm happy where things are going. Enjoy the pics and, as always, see you up the road!
and John Deere 
