On The High Plains Ch. 05

Now with the forge ready for firing and the fuel stockpiled, I was going to attempt to make a sod cutter. The idea was sort of like making a plow, except that the whole thing was designed to go no more than two inches into the soil and then to cut strips as wide as I could. Being an optimist, I was hoping to be able to cut about 24 inches, starting with a diagonal cut into the earth, letting the team pull the cutter for the length of whatever available sod I could find, and then coming back to chop it into 36 inch pieces for ease of handling.

I formed a wooden pyramid frame, although it wasn't exactly a geometric design. It was more of a right triangle with the hypotenuse being the leading, or cutting edge. I added a couple of handles, held in place with a cross member about halfway up. Then it was time to start forming the business end of the cutter, the blade. That turned out to be quite a challenge and took a number of starts and stops before I finally worked out something I thought might actually cut sod.

I realized that I had been overly optimistic when I thought I could build a cutter 24 inches in swath. What I wound up with was one that cut more like 13 inches – if it worked at all. At that it took me most of two days to hammer it out into the shape and sharpness I figured I'd need. Still if it worked, it would save me a lot of pain and agony.

Bright and early the next morning, I loaded the cutter on the sled, hitched the team to the sled and headed to the North Wichita, to a bend in the river that sported a continuous strip of thick grass. Once we got there, I dropped of the sled and hitched up the cutter. Looping the reins over my shoulder, we set off to see if my idea would work.

It did. Like I said, it cut a swath about 12 to 13 inches wide and about two inches deep – if I didn't let the nose dig in a bring everything to a halt! I managed to do that several times before I seemed to get the hang of it. Looking back at the first 150 feet, I was glad there wasn't anyone else around to see how crooked my cut had become. I was so intent on trying to keep the cutter level that I didn't pay enough attention to where the team was going. Ah, well.

I found out on the first turn that I needed a little modification: I needed a skid on the back side of the cutter so I could push the handles down, raising the cutter on the skid and letting me turn it. As it was, I had to manhandle the cutter around as the team struggled to understand my commands. If I had thought it would be a breeze with this device, I was mistaken. However I had to admit that it was still better than cutting it with my old trusty shovel!

After two passes, I figured I had more than a sled full so I took the shovel back and cut it into manageable lengths, which I rolled tightly. Given that the grass was mid-calf length at that time, the rolls weren't all that tight. By the time I had loaded a little more than one pass worth, the sled was about as full as I thought we could handle.

When I arrived back home, I left the sled near the new addition and took the team to the barn for a much-needed rubdown and a treat of a scoop of corn each along with their regular ration of hay. They had free run into the small corral in the back of the barn with plenty of water.

I went back to the sled and began to carry rolls of sod to the new roof. Starting at the lower corner, I unrolled sod across the rafter poles, slowly working to cover the entire roof. I figured if I could continue to keep the same yield, it would take about six passes to cut enough sod to cover the roof. Hopefully I could bring that all home in the same number of loads, make one last trip back to bring back the cutter, and have the roof completed within about a week.

That's pretty close to what happened. I finished the roof in eight days, taking one out in the middle to make a hunting trip for fresh meat. When I came back with an eight point buck and two rabbits, we had rabbit stew the first night and venison steaks the next two nights while Moxie smoked the rest of the venison. Then it was back to the roofing for me the next morning.

In my earliest days here, I had installed a crude shower on one side of the old pole barn. It required hauling water from the well and dumping it into a raised tub, then pulling a plug to let the water drizzle over whoever stood under it. It was still a crude process but better than trying to get into a little bathtub. And with my work with the sod, I was grateful for the shower every night. Just working with sod meant getting dirt all over you from head to toe so knocking it off every night was essential if I wanted to make love to my sweet Moxie.