There is an area out behind my barn that looks like someone had started to level off .. maybe to put up another building ?
They dug into a raised area on the north side leaving an embankment about 20 foot long.
The embankment is about 1-1/2 foot high in the center and tapers down to the ground at each end.
The dirt that was dug out was then dumped in a pile on the south side of the leveled off area.
I'm able to mow along the top of this embankment and along the bottom of it but that still leaves a strip of tall weeds that I can't cut down with the mower
so I decided to use the Lindeman to dig the mound of dirt back up and fill in the embankment.
Up until 2001, I used this little crawler on a regular basis for doing yard work and maintaining the gravel driveway.
I lived up in northern Michigan then and so I also used it to knock down the snow banks in the winter when they got to high.
I live in southern Indiana now and so far, there hasn't been any snowfall that I couldn't clear off with a broom.
I retired the crawler in 2001 and haven't done any work with it since then.
The reason that I no longer work with it is because it is 75 years old and if I brake something in the final drive, it is going to be very hard to find parts and if I can find them ... it's for sure that they will cost a lot more then they did when I first built this crawler up many years ago.
However, this was a very small job and it wouldn't put a lot of strain on the crawler so I decided to go ahead and use it instead of renting a skidsteer.
When I first decided to use it to move the dirt, I hadn't planned on taking any photos so I don't have any that show what the embankment and the dirt pile looked like before I started.
About half way thru the job, I got to thinking .... because I haven't worked the crawler in 19 years and I'm not likely to work it again, this may be my last opportunity to get photos of it actually being used.
I got my camera and took a couple of shots.
I have this ripper for an Agricat crawler that is a future restoration project.
![Image](https://images2.imgbox.com/95/6b/uwR0qBxP_o.jpg)
I fastened this ripper onto the forks of my lift truck and used it to loosen up the pile of dirt.
![Image](https://images2.imgbox.com/c3/61/UqjncSFb_o.jpg)
Here is a photo of the crawler ready to take another bite out of the dirt pile.
![Image](https://images2.imgbox.com/02/94/Mzk2stp0_o.jpg)
And ready to dump the load of dirt.
![Image](https://images2.imgbox.com/4e/a7/l6nWWEv7_o.jpg)
Once I had all the dirt moved and the embankment filled in, then I got out my old Bolens Ridemaster tractor with the grader blade and used it to do the finish leveling.
Behind the Ridemaster, you can see the embankment filled in with a nice slope now so I can mow it.
![Image](https://images2.imgbox.com/be/24/qB415QdH_o.jpg)
This is what the area looks like now where the dirt pile was.
All that is left is to pick up a few big rocks that showed up.
![Image](https://images2.imgbox.com/d7/c5/a8bZfAXX_o.jpg)
Of coarse ... after I used it to do all that digging in the dirt, then I had to spend about an hour getting it clean again.
![Image](https://images2.imgbox.com/cc/3b/zEDNTbHL_o.jpg)