A great piece of (now old) equipment

Here’s a post I wrote about a tool (well, farm implement) that works at least as well as advertised. I wrote it maybe three years ago, when we still lived out on the island in a pond. I often lament the quality of tools and equipment I buy today (I had a new farm jack bend like a banana less one hour into its first use yesterday) but this thing has exceeded my wildest expectations every time I’ve used it, so I went back onto the old blog site and found the post I had written about it. I think some things have improved over time (buildings that have been well designed and constructed, for one) but most equipment and tools I buy are nowhere near as good as was made in years past. I sure wish they made equipment like this, today.

The roads to our house is 1.7 miles long, from pavement to our dooryard. My neighbor and I are basically the only two humans that perform any sort of maintenance on it. Another young fellow helps out with some repairs when it gets bad but his job prevents him from doing much of anything in terms of snow removal and related tasks, so that leaves it to two old geezers. We split the cost of what we thought was a tailgate sand spreader three or four years ago to put on the back of his truck, but it turns out that it's essentially worthless for sand if you're trying to spread any real volume, because if you fill it more than about 25% full the sand just gets stuck, and even at that small amount one of us has been forced to walk behind the truck, whacking the sander with a shovel, while the other drives forward. It does a decent job with salt or pelletized ice melt, but we try to avoid those things because of the pond, so after the first year we pull it out of storage and mount it only when absolutely necessary.

I've been spreading sand for the past couple of years by filling the bucket of my tractor, driving to the worst parts of the road (two or three hills) and then flinging sand with a shovel. This is nasty work... It means I'm climbing in and out of the tractor cab countless times, and I end up sore for a day or two from flinging all that sand. It also takes forever, with multiple trips back and forth from the sand pile. So, I started looking for a better solution last summer. 

One option was a sand spreader that sits in the bed of a pickup truck. I have a couple of friends who plowed for hire a few years back (one still does it) and they really like those spreaders, which have a conveyor belt inside the contraption that pulls the sand out to a chute, where it's spread. the only problem is, you mount those into the bed of your truck at the beginning of winter, and you're stuck with it until well into spring. So much for picking up stuff from the lumber yard. They also seem to put down a lot more sand than we need. We're not trying to make our road passable for some guy driving a sports car with summer tires, which seems to be the goal of some towns that use these big spreaders. We just need to create a surface that allows our vehicles, all of which have great snow tires and 4WD, to find safe traction on the hills. And, we don't want to lose the bed of our pickup trucks all winter. Enter this wonderful little device...

After much research (i.e., lots of time on the tractor forums) I found that the one device that everyone agreed was great for spreading sand was the Kasco Herd wet sand spreader. This thing is amazing! It's basically just a seed spreader that would be used on a farm where broadcast seeding  is the norm (like what you might do with grass seed and lawn fertilizer, for you suburban folks). But the Herd people (a midwestern company purchased a few years back by Kasco, out of Indianapolis, IN) figured out that their seed spreader was also great for spreading sand if they put a sort of beefed-up "stirrer" up into the reservoir area, and used the PTO of the tractor to make it spin. You just open a gate at the bottom of the reservoir, turn on the PTO, and off you go. Does an absolutely amazing job. I found a used one at Greenway, the John Deere dealer up in Bangor. Another bonus was that I found their service to be so good, I've largely switched over to them instead of the United Ag & Turf dealer that's much closer. Greenway treats me like a customer, while anyone other than my one sales guy treats me like a number at United. I bought about $700 in maintenance items off of Greenway based on them being so much better, a month or so after I bought the spreader. Take that, United!

I was worried that the sand would start spilling out the open chute when I opened the gate, before I could get back in the tractor, or when I was driving along with the PTO off. If that happened, I'd have to buy or build an electric chute control. No need! If I have the PTO off I can just drive around and lose no more than a few grains of sand. But the moment I turn on the PTO, this thing is like a state road truck. Simply amazing.

I'm also amazed at how frugal this device is with sand. Because the pattern of spread is so efficient, I use about 1/4-1/3 as much sand as if I spread it with a shovel or with the tailgate spreader. I can control the width of the spread fairly well by controlling the PTO speed and my forward momentum. If it's not too terribly icy, I can fill it up about 2/3 full (50 shovel scoops) and do the worst hills, which includes the slope going up to our north-facing driveway. If I fill it all the way (about 75-80 shovels) I can do basically the slopes on the whole road and our neighbor's driveway, although I might need to refill it with 20-30 shovels after doing the driveways, to really do a great job at hill on the far end of the road.

I did manage to break the PTO shaft the second time I used it, but I think that was caused by raising it up too high with the hitch lift and putting the driveline in a bind. The local machine shop welded it back together for me for $30 (and a $20 thank you tip), as that was beyond my rudimentary welding skills and equipment. I think I now know how to avoid that mishap. But after a few uses now, I think this is my favorite tool of the winter. It's saved me hours of time, a lot of stiff muscles, and a lot of sand. I'm also much more likely to spread sand on days when it's useful but not completely necessary, which makes driving a little bit safer.