Using the Argo

I haven’t posted for a while as I've been at bit busy, mainly out in the forest. The Argo is running well and the time spent servicing it seems to have paid off.
We are trying to control the deer as we are not getting any tree regeneration in the forest, so we have been fixing the holes in the fence and adding new stakes where they have broken or rotted. We have also installed some stiles, otherwise people would just try and climb over the fence and no doubt damage it. The Argo has been great at getting materials out to the various locations.

One of the stiles is about half a mile from the nearest landrover track vehicle and I didn't fancy carrying the timbers, but with the Argo it easy.

One of the stiles under construction

I've also been cutting out some of the wind blown trees with a chainsaw and using the Argo to drag them out. There is more than enough for a lorry load so I might try and sell them, otherwise I'll just use them for firewood.

Initially I just tied a rope around the trunk and pulled out with the Argo but the ends dig in quite a bit and get covered in mud. So I made up a skidder from off-cuts of timber and put steel runners on the bottom. It's working quite well and the Argo make light work of it. So much so that I'm going to make up a bigger version to take 4 trees at a time

Towing timber with the skidder Two ends of a loop a rope go through a hoop in the end plate and then I used timber hitch knots around the log. The end loop just goes over the Argo towbar ball.
The rope is quite thin making it the weak link if anything goes wrong.

We've driven round the site quite a bit recently trying to find the best routes to various points in the forest. The land is difficult to traverse even in the Argo. It was high forest till about 1990, when clear felled so it has lots of tree stumps sticking up out of the ground which are now covered in heather or moss. On top of this, it's been forestry-ploughed such that there are deep parallel ditches at 2m spacing over much of the site. If you are in the heather you know there are lots of plough ditches but you can't see them without getting out and walking.

I've not been stuck yet but I've come quite close to it when one set of wheels fell into a plough ditch. Luckily I managed to reverse may way out

Argo on one of the old tracks in the forest.

The route we used to get up the hill

This is where we are going today.

Once we have got some routes sorted out it will get a lot easier as they will get flattened out with use. So hopefully over the next few months getting round will be a lot easier.