Adam Baumann made a roof rake that attaches to a tractor
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
A dairy farmer from Edgar, Wis. Recently displayed creativity in solving a winter problem.
Mother Nature dumped record amounts of snow in Wisconsin last month. The weight of the growing piles of snow meant Adam Baumann and employees from Twin B Dairy needed to act quickly to prevent roofs from caving in.
“We got 60 inches of snow in February and had some sheds and barns that caved in already, so we needed to be a little more proactive,” Baumann told Farms.com. “My dad and uncle went on the roofs with a shovel but quickly realized there was too much snow and shoveling wasn’t going to work.”
The group came up with the idea of taking a handheld roof rake and scaling it up in size to put on a tractor.
They attached a piece of soft pine wood to a metal pole. Then, they affixed the assembled roof rake to the front of their John Deere 6420.
Once they got the hang of maneuvering the rake on the tractor, they cleared snow off four buildings in about three hours.
“That seemed to be the ticket. It worked really well,” Baumann said.
Neighbors soon caught wind of what the Baumanns were up to and came over to watch them in action.
“We had one gentleman come over and didn’t really give us a choice,” Baumann said. “He said that we were coming over to clear the snow off his shed. We had probably a dozen people come by to see how we made it and ask if we could clear roofs for them.”
Baumann documented the roof rake in action in a video on the farm’s Facebook page last Wednesday. It has since been viewed about 162,000 times and has been shared more than 2,000 times.
“I never expected the video to get so much attention,” he said. “It’s cool when so many people take an interest in what you’re doing.”