another rock...........

Today my daughter helped me pick up rocks in the field. Of course I let her drive the 4 wheeler with the trailer behind it. Anyway, I spotted a rock out of the corner of my eye. So I grabbed the tiling spade and started to dig around it. Yea right! LMAO The more I dug , the bigger it got. SO we left it, and I said this one is a job for the skid loader. Wowsa! It was a challenge to dig out, but the Gehl wouldn't give up the fight. Glad this is the only monster I found like this so far. LOL Any one else got any big rock photos that challenged you in the field?
Kow Farmer

I don't have any pictures but I plow up 3 or 4 of those things every time I plow the field next to my house and there are several more the plow hits but doesn't bring up enough to move.Its tough on plow points.I'm plowing with a M and older 3 bottom plows and no trip bottoms.

I was buzzing along with 1650 oliver 4/14 a ft deep 4 th gear and then there was this clunk then i went and got two new shares .
Working for a neighbor picking rocks 4020 with rear carrier wife drivin she turned around and said i think we got enough the front ends off the ground !!

Years ago I went to get a rock out of the field with the 800 Case and loader. Dug all around it and could have parked the 800 and loader on top of the rock. Hooked a corner and only lifted the one back wheel off the ground on the tractor. Covered it back up and is still there today!

Not in the field but we finally hooked up to rural water last year. They were directional boring from my side of the road, then under the road to the water main, they hit a big something about six inches deep. They decided to move over ten feet and it wasn't clear but they bounced the bit around enough to get through.

Fast forward to the next weekend, I have rented a small track hoe an bought 40 ft of pipe. First couple feet went okay but after that I started finding large pieces of concrete. Then large boulders, then a wall, then a basement floor.

I decided to backfill six inches of dirt on top of the basement floor and laid my pipe, covered it up and started to haul off the concrete and haul fill back to the trench. I had ideas of a 12 inch trench and 6ft deep, in reality I had a 3ft wide trench 4.5 ft deep. That little digger never gave up.

SIL was building a pond on my place and dug up three as big as that skid loader. The rest of the digging was pure dirt.

I dig up a couple of rocks that size every year. The rest are baseball to volleyball size, and there are plenty of them. There is a rock ridge a few miles north of me where it's hard to dig a rock like that one because there is another one right beside it. They no till that land. Jim

Any rock on my farm has been imported from elsewhere.
Walt

There is some bottom ground just out from my one barn. It has been in crops as long as I have been alive. Two years ago I happened to be walking along the planter when my son went by with the finisher. I heard the disk gang bang over something. I went and got a shovel and started to dig for whatever the finisher hit. I went down 4-5 inches and hit a rock. I dug around it until I was at 2-3 feet deep and still had not found an edge. I went and got the JD 6400 and loader. I dug around more and never did find the edge. It was a circle over ten feet around.

I filled the hole back up and went and got some dirt an made it at least 10-12 inches deep over the highest point of the rock.

Marked it with a flag to keep an eye on the corn there. The crop did not show any difference in height over the rock. Must just be that the dirt is so good and there is water under it as the creek is only 30-40 feet away.

Dug this one out with my backhoe for my BIL and nephew last year.




This was the biggest one but I dug 47 rocks out of a 15 acre field. I did 7 about that size for another guy in a 10 acres field. That's my nephew in the photo.

Rick

Here in sw ohio I'm in an area where the last set of glaciers pulled back and left me these "treats"...that's a small one. There's been several we could dig out with a track hoe but were unable to pull it out of the hole- solution was to dig the hole 10 feet deeper and push it in. Let someone a couple of generations from now deal with it!

(quoted from post at 18:14:14 05/30/14) Today my daughter helped me pick up rocks in the field. Of course I let her drive the 4 wheeler with the trailer behind it. Anyway, I spotted a rock out of the corner of my eye. So I grabbed the tiling spade and started to dig around it. Yea right! LMAO The more I dug , the bigger it got. SO we left it, and I said this one is a job for the skid loader. Wowsa! It was a challenge to dig out, but the Gehl wouldn't give up the fight. Glad this is the only monster I found like this so far. LOL Any one else got any big rock photos that challenged you in the field?
Kow Farmer

Click to expand...

You need a bucket like this one!

Dynamite...............

No pics,But this spring I hooked a hunk of shale(in a field/area where there are
no rocks!) that ripped the rear of the 4 bottom plow off. Broke the frame....Thankfully it was repairable.Another (18 acre) field I have a pile of rocks(bowling ball size) that is bigger than the back of my pickup(from this year).

Seem to pull up a few like that when we plow. There are ALOT of rocks around here. Mostly 10-20 acre fields with a 10' row of rocks the length of the field in every fence row. There was a rock in one field that the PO had a back hoe in to dig up, but after they had gone 5+ feet and not found an edge, they gave up. At a certain point, you can't move it anyways.

hey ,,looks like that one could go in a wall,not a bad looking rock!

You guys are spoiled. My fields look like the 2nd and 3rd pic in Nate V's post. Stones the size of garden tractors are common as crooked lawyers here in ledge rock country. Lotsa good dirt between the stones and ledge though.

Dug this one out this spring, it's about 6' tall that way. This loader couldn't lift it, I had to just push it off the field.

20 years ago on a farm I rented for years I found a big rock while plowing. The 1850 and 5x16 Case simi mount in 5th gear were doing a perfect job till I hit the rock and stopped it dead in its tracks! I didn't stop. I bent the steering wheel shaft and took the muffler off as I went over the hood. It sheered all but one bolt on the back bottom at the frame and was back to the tail wheel still on the rock. It broke a piece off 4 feet long a foot wide and 8" thick, It was black and it had quarts in it and was very heavy. 3 days later and $900 in parts and labor for a muffler steering wheel shaft and some transmission repair (in the field) and the 5 bolts for the plow it was good to go. I on the other hand wasn't worth a crap for a month from the quick stop. I HATES ROCKS! Bandit

I'd take a semi truck load of those rocks. We used to have a ready-mix and material yard and could sell a load of big rocks a year. Location location location.

That's when you find a local guy with a dynamite license! You just tell them how small you want the pieces. My son was assisting a guy blowing rocks for a farmer. The farmer was asked how big did he want the pieces. The farmer replied, "Heck, I got a lot of kids. Make em small enough they can handle them".

Not my rock, but it's a big rock. Stan

Couple years ago while i was deep ripping i found two that took three shear bolts out on the deep till ripper at the same time , So i decided that enough was enough and went after them with the skid steer . Put the bucket on with the digging teeth and started digging on the first one thinking this won't take long. Yea wright , you could have built a small house in the hole on the first one and what i found was a rock the size of the skid steer . I had to dig a ramp to get it up and out , i could lift it to roll it and that was about all i could do with it . I had to roll it about three hundred feet to the edge of the field and over the edge down into the ravine , next one was no smaller and it went to the other end of the field . That leaves one more to get maybe this year . Rocks are not in short supply around here . A few years back while leveling a new barn site for my one friend i found a heart shaped pink rock that when i first hit it it about threw me out of the seat of the dozer . Nah we ain't bouncing over this rock it has got to go . I started working on it and what i found was this PINK heart shaped rock that was as big a a 750 J John Deere dozer and it was all that that dozer wanted to handle as i could not just push it i had to roll it and heart shaped rocks don't roll well. I got it out of the way of the work site and the local Vet saw it and wanted it . Vernon told him he could have it for free if he could figure out how to load and haul it . I figure that rock has to weigh about thirty ton or better. The Vet thought that w could just use two skid steers and set it on his little trailer . The rock is still setting where i pushed it . The biggest rock i have found in my life time was about 40 some years ago while i was working stripping coal . I was running a 992 Cat loader and we were going after the coal that was under old spoil and it had about sixty feet of org cover over that . We were putting the old spoil back into the old open pit and there was lots of rocks of all sizes . We had two D9's pushing and a D8 and a 988 Cat also working . I was the one that found this one and worked for hours digging around it . To move it it took both loaders and both D9's to move it the 100 or so feet into the old cut . The sad part of this is that the OLD shovel that put that rock there some sixty years before did it by it's self as we were told by the old farmer that was a boy when the farm was first stripped . That rock was wide enough that all four machines were side by side and it was taller then the cab on the 992 .

We have three sizes- table, basketball, and football. Then there"s the little stuff. Table rocks don"t fit under the kitchen table. I like having my own backhoe so I can bury them when needed, otherwise we haul them off. I"ve sold a fair amount to landscapers. Always a bumper harvest each year, rain or shine. Many rocks are pregnant- dig one up and a couple babies are huddled next to it.

Looks like a seal.

Dad dug up a bunch of rocks for a neighbor when I was a kid, the one was so big the only way he got it buried deeper was he found a crack and was able to work the hoe bucket teeth into the crack and split it.
Biggest one I dug up, had the front bucket of the Ford backhoe full of dirt, got it clamped against the boom with the back bucket, lifted the stabilizers and still lifted the front end off the ground.
Only time I miss rocks is when it rains and I barely get out my driveway.

Theres and old jaw type rock crusher for sale not too far from me. If I had the money I'd never have to buy gravel again!

Amish guy had a little jaw crusher. Would take stuff up to football size. I think every guy I know, including me, tried to buy that thing. He moved out and took it with him.

I live outside of Little Rock. Aptly named city. This rock was a little too large for the tractor/trailer combo when it slipped to the back of the trailer.
BillL