My Farm Jack - and what I do with it.

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Farm Jack? some will be wondering what I'm talking about? Well, it's one of these:



Obviously Mrs J was not home when I took that picture and, on reflection, thank goodness it didn't fall over!

So how did I get involved with such a strange jack and what on earth do I do with it?

I first saw one many years ago when I worked at the wee garage out in Dalkeith because one of our farmer customers always had one in the back of his Land Rover. When I asked him what it was he demonstrated it to me by jacking the vehicle up by it's bumper and I thought it was a most impressive tool but couldn't really see a use for it in what I was doing - stayed in my memory though.

Then, when I had the gardening squad for 15 years - largely, although not exclusively, looking after the mature grounds around churches and church properties - I found us replacing rotted off fence posts on a quite regular basis. It's a real pain digging out old, concreted in, fence post stumps and it can take a long time for each post. Then I saw a video where the chap was using a farm jack to pull the stump from the ground. I managed to convince the boss we should buy one and it was amazing.

Many domestic fences are constructed using panels these days so if you're replacing a rotted off post you've got to get the existing bit of post and it's concrete infill out of the ground before you can install the new post, you can't simply put another one in the ground next to it. Likely you'll find, if a post has rotted off, there's nothing to easily get hold off you end up digging all round it and levering it out with a big bar or something else. This can take a lot of time and is very tiring if you've got a few to do. Also you end up with a big hole which takes a lot of filling in and a lot more concrete to stabilize the post. Using the Farm Jack it's much more like pulling a cork out of a bottle. Start off by digging a narrow trench around the top of the concrete until you get down far enough to loop a lifting rope, length of steel hawser, length of chain, or whatever around it, doesn't need to be very deep. Position the jack over the stump, loop the hawser/rope over the jack saddle and jack it out of the ground. - Positioning the jack can be a problem and I'll mention more on that in a minute. Also it sometimes helps to use a big "podgering bar" thrust into the ground beside the concrete and wiggled about to loosen the hold of the ground on the concrete. This video gives you the general idea:



Of course these guys have got it easy because they don't have a rotted post. With a rotted off post you'll have to dig down enough to get the rope/hawser/chain/whatever around the top of the concrete slug, but that's much easier than trying to dig the whole slug out of the ground.

You'll notice the two bits of 2x4 (I love those imperial measurements) they use to stabilize the jack. The problem is without them you'll find the jack just tumbles over and the forces involved are far to great to resist by hand. I made a simple metal "A" frame which bolts to the top of the jack, didn't occur to me to use wood. actually i think the metal frame looks neater anyway:



Very simply fitted by just using the bolt that otherwise would be holding the top jaw in place:



The jack we bought for the squad was the cheapest I could find (budgetary restriction) and I did have some problems with it because of the cost cutting. The lifting mechanism wasn't very easy to engage and sometimes jumped out and the metal it was made from seemed to be a bit soft and wore quite quickly. For this reason, when it came to buying one for myself, I went for the "Rolls Royce" brand, Hi-Lift. and I don't regret it as it's still working as it did the first time I used it. Bought it from these people: https://www.paddockspares.com/off-road/jacking/hi-lift-jacks.html I went for the standard 4ft jack because they had it on a very good offer at that time. I did wonder if the longer version would have been better but the 4 ft one is fine for what I use it for, also pulls tree stumps too.

The other great advantage of buying that brand is they sell all the parts which means you can repair it if you break something. I also like that they have designed it with a sacrificial bolt in the lifting mechanism, it's the slightly smaller one bottom fight:



If you try to lift something well outside the jack's range the bolt snaps but the jack just stays where it is so doesn't collapse and maybe endanger you or wreck the jack. I've sometimes literally "swung" from the handle and haven't broken that bolt yet. Haven't had to try an extension bar on it yet, maybe that would do it?
I bought mine because I had a fence to replace at my older boy's house just after I retired - so couldn't get my hands on the works one and we did the whole job, at quite a leisurely pace, in a couple of days.
Here's where we'd got to at the end of the first day. All the old posts pulled and half the new fence built:



And the final result on the afternoon of the second day:

Some of these photos may be familiar to some of you as I think I posted some of them a few years ago when I built that fence. and that's made me think that you DIY guys might be interested in how I approach digging virgin holes for posts? If not, just bug out now!

In fact doing that fence meant pulling the old posts from the house down to the wall but beyond that it was all new fencing so new holes had to be dug. You can spend a lot of time and expend a lot of energy digging a fence post in virgin soil. For a six foot high fence you need at least a two foot deep hole. If all you've got is a spade it starts out quite easy and gets harder and harder the deeper you go. The ground can be very hard, there's stones and boulders to deal with and as the hole gets deeper you can't angle the spade so the earth stays on it and a lot of it just tumbles back into the hole each time you lift the spade! You end up making the hole wider than it needs to be simply to get the earth out! After thinking about this, quite a lot, I realized it boils down to two main problems. 1) loosening the earth and keeping the hole "neat" 2) getting the earth out of the hole without expending too much effort and without making the hole excessively large in diameter.

While I had the gardening squad my boss (not a gardener) suddenly turned up one day with six "revolutionary" he said, hand cultivators which were supposed to make weeding and cultivating borders easier for us. This is one of them:



and it's "business" end looks like this:



We didn't really get on with them, a normal hoe worked better, so they got parked in the back of the tool shed. However I discovered that they dig a very accurate hole if simply thrust into the ground and rotated a few revolutions. What this does is loosens the earth nicely but doesn't disturb the earth around the hole. Then you need to get this loosened earth out of the hole and a proper post hole digger is hard to beat for this. We had a wooden handled one which eventually we broke the handles off. When I bought my own I got one with glass fibre handles which, although they seem to bend slightly, are actually much stronger:



When you move the handles apart it closes up the spade blades and all you do is lift the loosened earth straight out of the hole:



So the procedure is to first loosen the earth with the "twisty" cultivator and then lift the loosened earth out. Then back in with the twisty tool to loosen another 5 or 6 inches of soil and lift that out with the post hole digger. You just keep on doing that until the hole is as deep as you want it. Compared to any other method I've tried this is much quicker - 2 ft deep hole in "normal soil with no excessively big stones in about 5 minutes flat without really breaking sweat. Of course you can use just the post hole digger on it's own but because the earth isn't loosened, especially as you get deeper, it's difficult to close the spade ends and, in fact, we broke the handle of the one with the wooden handles that we initially had - and I've seen a number of post hole diggers with broken handles. The glass fibre handles go a long way to alleviating this problem but loosening the soil with the "twisty" cultivator first almost does away with the problem altogether and, more importantly if you're doing a number of them, it makes it much quicker when the soil is loose.

Here's a two foot deep virgin hole dug in this way in just a few minutes - look at how neat it is:

and here it is, with it's new post, braced, waiting for the concrete:



I like to use batch mixed "real" concrete rather than the quick setting stuff. Better and cheaper in my opinion - unless I'm maybe doing just one post in which case the quick setting stuff is very convenient, but you do need to brace the post overnight if using batch mix.

I also have a couple of stout "helpers" for when I hit something that's too big or hard for the "twirly" tool to cope with:



One is inch rebar with a chisel shape on one end and a digging shape on the other. The other bar is made of some very hard metal, and is very heavy, with a pointy end and a "Y" shape on the other. I've had a good length of scaffold pole on that one and been swinging off it without it bending:





Once you get sorted out with being able to pull the old stumps quickly and with little effort and being able to dig the hole quickly and without breaking too much sweat, fencing starts to become a real fun thing to do. I used to dread tackling rotted off posts but now I say "bring it on"! Here's "the gang" hanging out in my back garden:

The two "podgering" poles are on the ground behind me, I forgot to put them in the photo.

 

[porta]

Yup, a very useful tool…just don’t lend them to people or they come back without the sleeves and pins

 

[irc]

Yep, brilliant invention, wish I'd takem mine out of the Land Rover before I sold it.
If you're really stuck, a couple of D-shackles and some chain will allow you to (very slowly) winch a car out of a ditch when there isn't enough room to get a Land Rover near enough to pull and someone has "borrowed" your Tirfor winch and forgotten to return it... no prizes for guessing how I found out.
I also used mine for jacking out 30-year old oak fence posts. They field boundary had changed and the owner didn't want them. No concrete, straight into heavy clay soil. And almost no rot on nearly all of them. 30 or so of them have since done nearly another 20 years in a different field.
Creosote was a wonderful thing for preserving wood. Admittedly slightly less good for the surrounding wildlife.
Sadly almost completely banned now, so posts struggle to last 10 years.

 

[porta]

We’re replacing posts that have only been in 12yrs, but, to be honest, the creosote ones weren’t any better wehn you have sheeps rubbing them. I also noted that the old creosote ones used to split more easily wehn driven in mechanically, we reckon it was because the modern kiln dried n treated ones still have a bit of flexibility in them.

 

[irc]

These ones were originally put in by hand by a little Irish bloke called... Paddy. He must have been over 60 when he did them.
He had also dug my parents (big) driveway by hand about 10 years before that.
He could keep up a swearing monologue for half an hour at a time, possibly without deviation or repetition, while smoking and taking the occasional swig from a bottle of cold tea.
Wonderful chap, was still working in his 80s.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

These ones were originally put in by hand by a little Irish bloke called... Paddy. He must have been over 60 when he did them.
He had also dug my parents (big) driveway by hand about 10 years before that.
He could keep up a swearing monologue for half an hour at a time, possibly without deviation or repetition, while smoking and taking the occasional swig from a bottle of cold tea.
Wonderful chap, was still working in his 80s.

I meant to add to your experience of that wonderful chap by mentioning another "treasure" I knew in my childhood, Unfortunately I got distracted and forgot to post!

However, still worth mentioning. I think I've mentioned before that my Dad was a "professional" man but owned the land - 3 fields - around our house which he ran as a bit of a "project" We grew lots of produce, like potatoes (a whole field was dedicated to them) Strawberries, gooseberries, blackcurrents, raspberries, beetroot, etc, etc. which were sold to the local wee shops in town. We had one full time employee who looked after all this with occasional workers coming in to help lift the "tatties" etc when extra hands were needed.

This chap was the most wonderful character. He'd been a prisoner of war in the far east, my Dad spent "his war" in the far east which is probably why he was employed? and he was very good to me. When at home during school holidays I spent hours with him, probably getting in his way when I was younger, but helping with the cultivator etc as I got older. He had the most wonderful vocabulary, much of it pretty "blue" but also he invented words. For instance he made his own liquid feed for the tomatoes. It was mixed up in a big - 50 gallon? - oil drum and consisted of many organic component parts, Water and horse dung being a major component, it smelt "rich"! If I misbehaved he would threaten to drop me in it! Anyway, this mixture was called "Cacky Tomato, Jippo" Being now older and more "worldly" I think he was probably slightly unhinged by his POW experience. I have a picture in my mind of him holding onto the handles of the cultivator - it was a large twin cylinder JAP engined "monster" - kicking his legs in the air as he shouted some expletive or other as the machine bucked on one of the many large stones in the ground. I still miss him to this day and remember him very fondly.

 

[bugsymike]

As Jock says very useful tool the farm jack and mine more recently was used when pulling stumps, etc. when neighbour and I replaced boundary with a concrete block wall.
I recall Moskviches had a similar design on the car tyre changing jack as standard.
Regarding the "old boys" we had one who lived in the village and worked for the local council , but could always be on hand if the garage wanted to lay some tarmac with a diesel pedestrian roller he would use with ease, but me as a young apprentice got thrown all over the place when going from forward to "astern". I recall he often brought in ferrets to terrorise our secretary a large woman and to see her bolt through the door past him was amusing. he had a small holding also with sheep I believe and was told he used to "deal" with the rams "nuts" usuing his teeth, though I never saw that!

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Having made the post about our estate worker above, by the way he was a Geordie and had a wonderful accent, i thought I'd post about my latest adventure with the Farm Jack.

Many years ago, maybe 20? I planted a Berberis Darwinii at the bottom of our garden, between the shed and next door's fence. It was a beautiful plant with orangy yellow flowers and ferocious spiky needles - which I thought might deter anyone thinking of climbing into our garden over the back fence. For many years it grew slowly bigger and every year we were treated to it's wonderful display of flowers. Then it got a bit too big, filling the space between the shed and neighbour's fence and reaching over the top of the 6 ft fence. It was also beginning to encroach on the, lower growing, Astilbes next to it so, nothing for it, got the secateurs out and pruned it. Ouch! those thorns are really vicious! It didn't like being pruned and never flowered again!

With it's ferocious thorns it still acted as an effective barrier though so I just pruned it back every year.

Mrs J has been saying for some years now, how unattractive the berberis now looks and how she'd like to have a lilac tree in that corner. I knew the berberis wouldn't surrender without a fight, both from it's thorns and simply because it must now have a pretty extensive root system, so I've been putting off doing anything about it however Mrs J is now mentioning it more often and I also realize, having just done annual services on the cars, that I'm definitely less fit than I used to be. I found it more physically challenging doing the services this year than ever before. So i decided that if I was ever going to uproot that berberis I was going to have to do it soon and it might as well be now while the warmer weather is still here.

So, on Wednesday, I waded in with secateurs, loppers and bow saw and reduced the bush to this:

Took me nearly two hours and left me feeling rather "pugglt" with blood drawn by the thorns despite wearing my heavy duty leather welding gauntlets. Decided that was enough for the day.

Yesterday I broke out the jack, support, chain and a piece of wood to spread the force from the jack on the soft earth in the border:

I prefer using the chain on "green" wood as I find it tends to dig in where a rope will slip and stretch.

Didn't take long to assemble the "rig", put the load spreading piece of wood in place and wrap the chain round the stump securing it to the jack with a couple of bolts:

Started jacking and, oops, the stump hardly moves at all but the jack foot is sinking steadily into the ground until it smashes the wooden load spreader and starts burying itself in the ground!

Ok. Let the jack down and substitute a piece of 3x3 fence post instead:

Now that's better but, damn it, after half a dozen pulls on the handle, the thing is so solidly in the ground I have to put a wee extension on the handle to get enough leverage:

Now we're "cookin' with gas" Notice the wee jubilee clip on the extension pipe? It's there to stop the extension piece from disappearing inside the black handle, which is most annoying if it happens because you've got to dismantle the setup before turning the jack upside down to retrieve the extension piece. Decided to not do that again.

So, great, now the stump is starting to come up out of the ground, but my goodness it's got a firm hold. Oh, b****r, now the jack's decided to fall over because the force vector has changed as some of the roots are rupturing:

If I'm not careful the top of the rig is going to punch a hole in the side of my shed. Better get a support. It's actually a piece of "T" section steel bar I found on some waste ground many years ago:

I'd been intending to make an engine support beam out of it - for doing clutches etc - but have never found one I couldn't do with a jack under the sump so it just "lives" against the wall in my garage. Another of the "useful" things cluttering up my workshop area.

After quite a bit more energy was expended cranking the handle the jack got to the end of it's travel and most of the stump and it's roots are hanging in mid air. Rather reminds me of a Triffid?

I had to cut a couple of the largest roots which were still hanging on before removing the stump to my wheel barrow and dismantling the rig. The spent about an hour digging out the remains of the roots and then digging over the plot ready for planting the new Lilac:

Need to do a bit of research into Lilacs now. Might be that this is not the best time of year to be planting one?

Definitely feeling my age these days and beginning to realize my physical powers are definitely in decline. Not ready to give up yet though.

Edit. Just thought I'd mention about bow saw blades. See my saw leaning against the fence in the first picture if you're not sure what a bow saw is. Just to mention that if you're cutting "green" wood, as I was here, be sure to get the correct blade. It'll have a considerable offset on the teeth compared to a blade intended for cutting "Cured", dry wood. I didn't know there were different blades and my saw, when I bought it many, many years ago, had a "dry" blade in it which jammed up something rotten when trying to lop tree branches with it!

 

[bugsymike]

Soil looks good Jock, probably why your Berberis had done so well, I am on top of a sandstone quarry, so red soil and fast draining. We used to have ducks and afterwards around that area everything prospered, but generally the rest just survives.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

he had a small holding also with sheep I believe and was told he used to "deal" with the rams "nuts" usuing his teeth, though I never saw that!

On our northern boundary was a farm. My parents were good friends with the farmer - in fact my mum used to take in orphan lambs and bottle feed them. My mum was an animal lover so giving them back was always a problem for her. Just up the road was what we called "the wee farm" which was actually a separate collection of buildings belonging to the main farm and included the lambing sheds and sheep dip plunge bath. It was always good fun to sit on the fence watching the sheep being dipped in the bath and trying not to fall into the dip! I seem to remember it was at the same time that they "ringed" the young Tups. An interesting thing for a young lad to witness which involved a large pliers like tool which expanded the rubber ring so it could be slipped over the Tup's "bits" - I remember they used to jump about a bit after release, something I was only able to truely appreciate after I'd "grown up"! Having seen more sheep's rear ends than I care to remember, the thought of doing the job with your teeth is something I shudder to contemplate!

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Soil looks good Jock, probably why your Berberis had done so well, I am on top of a sandstone quarry, so red soil and fast draining. We used to have ducks and afterwards around that area everything prospered, but generally the rest just survives.

Ah, Ducks. We had 4 Aylesburies, a dozen Khaki Campbells and 4 geese. We sold the eggs to the local fish monger, another of dad's friends, and I know they were greatly prized with people having permanent pre order accounts with the fishmonger for them. The geese "guarded" the ducks and were terribly noisy. They all lived in the same stable building and we never lost one to the foxes, as far as I remember.

 

[Cheest]

The only time I ever see farm jacks anymore are across the hoods of kitted out Jeeps that never see dirt. I grew up using them around my folks property and we always had a bunch of two by whatever pieces of wood to set them on.

On this side of the pond, the sadist designed tool with the tines is sold as a ‘Garden Weasel’. Useless as tits on a boar in my opinion. The two handled calorie burner, aka post hole digger, is known locally as both a Gut Buster and a Knuckle Breaker. My shoulders hurt just looking at it.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

On this side of the pond, the sadist designed tool with the tines is sold as a ‘Garden Weasel’. Useless as tits on a boar in my opinion. The two handled calorie burner, aka post hole digger, is known locally as both a Gut Buster and a Knuckle Breaker. My shoulders hurt just looking at it.

Garden Weasel, what a strange name? the premium branded item over here is the Garden Claw, copied by many for a fraction of the price, all the sort of thing a novice dabler in gardening might buy in my opinion. I really like the post hole digger but agree the name "knuckle breaker" is a very good descriptive one. Mine has stops to try to prevent you marmalizing your fingers but it's only partially successful, you soon learn not to be too enthusiastic with the handles!

 

[bugsymike]

Garden Weasel, what a strange name? the premium branded item over here is the Garden Claw, copied by many for a fraction of the price, all the sort of thing a novice dabler in gardening might buy in my opinion. I really like the post hole digger but agree the name "knuckle breaker" is a very good descriptive one. Mine has stops to try to prevent you marmalizing your fingers but it's only partially successful, you soon learn not to be too enthusiastic with the handles!

When I planted the grandchildrens swing in the garden I borrowed one of these from neighbour, four holes in mnutes.
The ducks we had were Khaki Campbells, nine with the drake, eggs great for cooking and big fry ups.

 

[irc]

Yep, got one just like it.
Brilliant in most soil types (like where my sister lives), post holes dug in minutes each.
Sadly, not so much in heavy clay with bonus large flint pieces randomly scattered through it (like where i live) - nearly dislocated both arms using it a couple of years ago, haven't touched it since.
I guess I'm getting too old and creaky to use it any more.

 

[bugsymike]

Yep, got one just like it.
Brilliant in most soil types (like where my sister lives), post holes dug in minutes each.
Sadly, not so much in heavy clay with bonus large flint pieces randomly scattered through it (like where i live) - nearly dislocated both arms using it a couple of years ago, haven't touched it since.
I guess I'm getting too old and creaky to use it any more.

I had never used one before and had visions of it locking and me spinning around, but in the end my only problem was holding my breath while it dug due to the two stroke oil fumes.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Soil looks good Jock, probably why your Berberis had done so well, I am on top of a sandstone quarry, so red soil and fast draining. We used to have ducks and afterwards around that area everything prospered, but generally the rest just survives.

Yes mike, we're lucky with the soil. I've been told that the site our estate is built on used to be a nursery garden which probably accounts for the good quality. We bought our house, about 40 years ago now, in the first phase of building and while it was still a hole in the ground. The builder had scraped off most of the top soil and made a very large pyramid from it which saw a constant stream of tipper lorries loading up and leaving the site. They stopped when about three quarters of the earth had gone and used what was left to layer on the gardens after the houses were built. It's very obvious when digging fence holes. Luckily we seem to have about a couple of feet of this lush topsoil and stuff grows well in it. Bet the builder made a killing on the lorries full of topsoil which were carted off.

 

[porta]

Yep, got one just like it.
Brilliant in most soil types (like where my sister lives), post holes dug in minutes each.
Sadly, not so much in heavy clay with bonus large flint pieces randomly scattered through it (like where i live) - nearly dislocated both arms using it a couple of years ago, haven't touched it since.
I guess I'm getting too old and creaky to use it any more.

Mate who borrowed our strimmer last year:
‘It smokes a lot and was a bugger to start’
Took it into barn and asked him to show me, sure enough, 8 pulls and plumes of smoke…
‘did you use the fuel I gave you?’
‘Yup and two shots of two stroke’
‘it’s designed for unleaded and why 2 shots’
‘It says “4 stroke” on the cap’

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Mate who borrowed our strimmer last year:
‘It smokes a lot and was a bugger to start’
Took it into barn and asked him to show me, sure enough, 8 pulls and plumes of smoke…
‘did you use the fuel I gave you?’
‘Yup and two shots of two stroke’
‘it’s designed for unleaded and why 2 shots’
‘It says “4 stroke” on the cap’

Ah well, better than running a two stroke on straight petrol! Bet you had to clean the plug?

 

[porta]

Yes, and the carb and exhaust
This was the same guy that had to replace my chainsaw, as he was reving the behind of it with the brake on, melted the clutch, brake and the cover. I’ve not lent him anything since and he’s not even allowed to adjust the seat, radio or anything wehn he gets a lift!