Method to remove ground rods

I had lots of ground rods to remove when I took the electric fence down. There were about 30 rods - 8 feet long each, with about 6" above ground.

It wasn't an option to drive them deeper because we needed to use the ground for planting. A search of the interwebs showed numerous videos of using a pipe wrench and twisting it loose. I tried that and it was a tremendous failure. I have a clay soil and I got one of them to budge but on a few others I tried, I never worked so hard for so little results.

Others had pullers, but with the forces involved, there was no way those designs would work. Faced with many remaining rods to pull, I tried putting a metal bar with holes, one for the post and one for the chain and letting the tractor do the work. My short version (4 inches between holes) worked, but often slipped off.

I then got a welded together truck spring assembly that I had used to mount a gate and tried that. The difference was the holes were cut with a plasma cutter and were kind of jagged. Also, the spacing between the rod hole and the chain hole was about 12 inches. It worked very well!!! Here is a photo of the contraption in action:

Attachment 46264