Tractor needed for new adit at Sandland

Sandland recently met a highly motivated and experienced volunteer who met us through one particular news article, and since meeting has spent many long days contributing at Sandland.  Over the past month, they have brought their privately owned excavation equipment and headed up the task of improving the roads on our property.  In addition to that, they have been creating a new road and bridge down to an area where we have chosen to dig a new tunnel!  We will be creating a new level adit speeding up our digging progress by between 50 and 100%.  The goal is to haul though the new adit which will eliminate the 45 minutes spent winching and zip lining for every train of sand as well as associated pesky maintenance!

We recently learned we have space constraints within the new loading area that will limit a bobcat or tractor from being able to maneuver when the sandpile is present.  The bobcat wouldn't be able to back up the new road without tipping over since the slope is steep.  For us to use our new adit, we concluded the need to buy some sort of machine to dump directly into.

 

Luckily, we found a very sweet deal on the below pictured antique-yet-reliable tractor.   This machine had already been loaned to Sandland to test out the concept and we found it to work nicely.  We also plan on using it to haul sand up the steep hill, eliminating a huge portion of our annual sand hauling cost.  The ability for us to own and operate a machine to bring sand up our main, steep road, is something that has been a dream for a very long time.

For our dream to become reality, and to use our new adit, we need $1800 for the tractor plus $200 gas to drive it to Sandland and fill it up.  Experienced friends say this is a REALLY good deal for a generally reliable tractor.

We would like to give a shout out to the generous friends who covered the cost of the culverts which we abruptly realized we needed, as well as successfully covering last year's sand hauling costs, and a new smaller chisel!  All these donations are needed but humbling.  Last month, I personally covered thousands in related expenses like gas for the equipment and our volunteer excavator offered his time and resourcefulness for free which is HUGE!  Unfortunately I'm well past what I can afford and have no choice but to ask for help.

Around 8:30 in this video, you can see the tractor in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGZ3XIh921Y

 

If you've already donated and are barely scraping by, please take care of yourself first. We don't want to cause hardships.  We're hoping to reach out to explorers, cavers, and friends who haven't had the opportunity to donate to Sandland yet.  Please do share and spread the word!  Future explorers will appreciate the more extensive tunnels that your donations make possible!

If you're not familiar with Sandland, check out our website http://tunnelcity.com/  and for a fairly recent map of the 850 feet of tunnels we have created so far, here's a news article:

https://www.mississippivalleypublishing.com/daily_gate/ottumwa-native-creates-underground-cave-maze/article_3fbbc649-a4fa-5d59-a81f-9aea155a0106.html