(Part 1 of 2): My first attempt at grading a gravel road with my box blade.

PART 1 of 2: Box blade vs. old gravel road
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Boy, what an adventure. I bought this box blade implement when I bought my tractor exactly 2 years ago with the sole intention of re-grading this private gravel road behind my property (my property is the one you see in the video with the nice new wooden fence).
Fast-forward 1 year or so after I bought my property (and the tractor and box blade implement) when I approached every property owner on this private gravel road about the prospects of me attempting to fix their road, and allowing me to put a 4-foot gate in my fence to get my tractor onto the gravel road.
Everyone except for 3 people agreed, and many even offered to pitch in on the costs. There was a lot of drama associated with this whole thing (the 3 people not wanting me to put a 4-foot gate in my fence etc.), and 1 (a renter?) even got in a shouting match with me telling me to stay off of his road (the section around the curve).
Fast forward to year two, when I became good friends with people on the first section of the private gravel road, of which, one offered to hire me/pay me for my services to fix the area in front of their property.
Previously, I was making ill-fated efforts of fixing a "few" of the really bad pot holes with the bucket on the front of my tractor. Bad idea, because it don't work, and you can damage the tractor (which I ended up doing).
So the other day, having completed all of the stump removal work on my property, I removed the back hoe from my tractor, and put on the 3-point hitch to where I can use the box blade, and landscape attachment on the back of my tractor.
I decided to hook up the box blade, and drive the tractor on the white line on the unsafe busy main street to get onto this gravel road (because not everyone was Ok with me getting onto the road from my property) to finally give the box blade a go on this pot hole ridden gravel road.
Man-o-days! The area surrounding the potholes was like CEMENT, and the ripper tines on the box blade simply wouldn't cut into this had pan. The box just danced around make a HUGE noise throughout the neighborhood.
Persistent as I can sometimes be, I stuck with it, and just kept dragging the box blade until the ripper teeth were started digging into the hard packed gravel, and pulling up material.
Over, and over I kept doing this until the ripper teeth dug up enough material to start to fill the box blade as I drug over the bad areas.
With material swirling around in the box, when I drove over a pot hole, material would float out under the box and fill the hole(s).
This was really cool! If I did it enough in one stretch, I found that I could really float out the contents of the filled box to where it was smearing icing on a cake, or smearing a perfect coat of peanut butter on a piece of bread.
Some hours later (as seen in the Part 2 of 2 video), I pretty much fixed the whole stretch of the first part of the road.
One challenge was dealing with the water contained in all of the pot holes. Luckily I didn't find any dead dogs of cats floating around in the bottom of any of the puddles, but the water had to go somewhere once I graded out the holes. Most of it came to the surface, and got spread around, but it did make for a bit of a soupy mess in doing so. Over time hopefully it will dry out and drain.
While I was out there (on the first stretch of the road), two of the people whole live on the back part of the road around the curve stopped to thank me and give me some case. A heart-felt thanks to them !
Lessons learned: If you are remotely thinking about buying a tractor, always get the next bigger one up, even if you can't afford it (you could always buy a used one).
Fingers crossed that I didn't make the situation worse back there, or cause some other unforeseen issues (like getting the grade wrong, and causing more lakes/puddles when it rains).