Trench work 101

Okay, this was a failure.  But still a good learning experience.  We learned that some trenchers are just not what they are stacked up to be.  In this case I rented a ProTrac Trencher and drug our friend Tomas along for the muscle.  We started off innocently enough getting the ProTrac unloaded from the trailer and testing out the shovel blade before rigging up the trencher blade.  We should have guessed at this point that this day was not going to turn out as planned.  The shovel didn't have enough power to move any of the debris from earlier burnings or wood heaps.  Nor did it have enough to even work on leveling any ground or filling any low spots.   Nevertheless, we figured it'd be fine with the trenching chore, since that was primarily what we needed it for.

After struggling for a bit with the hydraulic hoses Tomas finally got them connected and we were on our way.   We headed over to the area where I needed the trenching.  The work started out well enough, but soon we found that things were moving a bit too slow.  It had taken roughly 45 minutes to dig a trench only 5' long.  Worse, the trench was only 24" deep, instead of the required 36".