Good old Minnesota frost boil

I came across this on fb, and thought it was interesting. You can see the ground was worked up, but I would guess the cultivator tractor didn't hit the hole just right. For those who have never seen one before, you can see the mud squished out around the tires and the rig just sunk. These will have no bottom, at least not that you can reach with a tire.

Forgot pics.

Yes sir, they got into the white pudding! Done that with an air drill one time, that was a chore to get out.

That looks like no fun at all

Fred

When you pull on the stuck vehicle it just wants to plow ahead instead of popping back up on top. I don’t envy them at all.

The rock pile hillsides that we farmed when I was a kid we?re good for that. If we had a wet fall and dry spring the hillside springs would eat you up even though they looked dry.

Bigger equipment , bigger problems.

A properly placed stick of dynamite should get it wright out of there!!!!
Loren

We had one at work like that last week. Took a couple of big four wheelers and an excavator to get it out. It was not a good way to end the day. I got my corn planted without incidence. Got the beans left on the ground that might have boils here also, I know they are just showing up now. Some of the gravel roads have some dandies. Think sun and warm!!

Not just a Minnesota thing, frost boils real common in northern Illinois too. I drove for UPS pedalling packages in the Quad-Cities, Moline, East Moline, & Rock Island and surrounding area. Worked for 5-6 weeks before Christmas of '77, then started full time 2nd week of Feb. '78. About April I got to replace a guy who broke his ankle playing basketball for 6 weeks. I got stuck five times in one week, once a day all week long. Front axle on my little truck was a drop I-beam, set a pop/beer can up on end and drive over it and frt axle knocks it over! The townships tried to keep the roads passable but they would get bad over night. Got stuck in a trailer court right in town one of those days! The common oiled dirt roads had no crushed rock base under them like blacktop or concrete roads, The snow being cleared from them all winter drove the frost deep into the ground aggravating the situation.

Never really had a problem with frost boils in farm fields, but had lots of sloughs that stayed wet well into the early summer that we couldn't farm thru some years. Had a place or two we farmed thru planting and stuck the 450 Farmall with frt mounted cultivator 3-4 weeks later.

Before I was old enough to help Dad was hauling manure one winter day, tried driving the M and spreader thru some snow in a slough, broke through the thin frost layer and tractor finally stopped sinking when the drawbar and rear tub was resting on the ground. Borrowed the straight truck the guy he hauled livestock for, loaded 6-8 feeder cattle in it, gated them in the very back, drove out cautiously hooked to the M and pulled it out backwards. Back then an M was the biggest tractor around for many miles. Truck could easily outpull the biggest tractors.

Never heard the term frost boil before but we have a problem with sand pockets that yield the same results.

Looks good and dry, you run a tractor over it 10 times without a problem then the next trip across the same spot you drop a tire in so fast you think a wheel fell off.

5 feet over in any direction and the ground is as hard as a rock.

I have dug a few of them out of the feed yard and corrals, what looks like a few hour job turns into a week long job trucking out sandy goo and hauling rock and gravel in.

We had a problem one time on the harvest with combines dropping in sinkholes in a field in north west Oklahoma about 20 miles south of Woodward. It was flat river bottom land. Five combines in this field and only three or four were running at any given time. One or two combines were always sitting there slanted sideways with one wheel in a sinkhole. The farmer finally came out with his tractor and sat there in his tractor waiting for the next combine to drop in so he could pull it out. We never let a combine get more than a half tank of grain in it because we knew it was only a matter of time until it would drop a wheel in a hole. Somewhere I have a picture of three combines sitting in a triangle, all stuck. Two had dropped in holes and the third one got stuck trying to pull one of the other combines out. After that was when the farmer came out with his tractor.

This is how quick it can happen in a few short feet. We told the combine drivers, when a wheel drops in, stop, don't fight it. This was one of the good drivers.