Today I sing the praises of a life-changing $90 tool.  When I made hash of part of my lower pasture a couple of weeks ago, part of the problem was not being able to get the red oak logs into a good position to grab them with the grapple.  I compensated by driving the tractor on ground that couldn’t support it and made another spring project for myself.  The issue was that the only way I knew to pull a log was to loop chain around it and pull the chain with the tractor.  These logs were situated in a way that there were no gaps underneath them, so I couldn’t get a chain in place.  I knew I couldn’t be the first person to face this problem, and my friend Bob confirmed that loggers indeed had a solution: log tongs or grapple tongs, available at the local purveyor of loggers’ miscellany for less than a pair of running shoes.

For reference , these tongs have a 32″ capacity.  Bob and I were able to pull out all six chunks of red oak in less than half an hour.  Magic!