Posts Tagged ‘brush piles’
Some Progress
I’m pretty sure I mentioned that the cleanup from our late winter tree trimming was going to be such an extensive project it would take the full summer to accomplish. I think that under-estimates the size of the project. One reason is the number of downed branches that were in our woods before we added to it with the trimming.
As we start the process of collecting branches from the trimming, it leads to a seemingly unending supply of other downed wood that also deserves to come out. We spent most of the morning yesterday cleaning out the section of woods where I had pulled down the three leaning widow-makers last summer.
This created monstrous new piles on the edge of the trail.
After lunch, I brought out the tractor and chipper to get down to business. We started in the back yard where the smaller maple tree branches were in three reasonable piles. With so much to do, I probably was trying to go too fast. Not paying enough attention to the exit chute, I was still feeding branches in after a plug had formed.
The spinning blades of the chipper will continue to pulverize the wood into dust. The dust finds any opening to escape and a cloud starts to form around the machine. That part finally got my attention. Oops.
After a significant delay to open the unit up and remove the plug and scraps wrapped around the spindle, we got back into the groove and made reasonable progress. By the end of the day, we hadn’t made it around to the two newest piles we stacked in the morning, but we converted one of the oldest piles in the woods into a mini-mountain of chips.
As much as I’d like to have our entire property done all at once, I’m working to accept the partial progress as good enough. Getting the chips spread along the trail helps to serve as a nice reward that soothes my angst in the mean time.
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Soft Ground
Nature didn’t live up to what the forecasters had predicted for us on Sunday. The temperature struggled to approach 50° (F) and the sky never really cleared enough to allow the sun to make much difference. Despite the less-than-inspiring conditions, Cyndie and I rallied our energies to pull out the wood chipper for another round of chewing up brush piles.
Since we are in the wonderful season when the top layer of soil is freezing and thawing daily, I had hoped to park the tractor on the driveway again, near the next largest pile of branches. Unfortunately, that meant the chute would be pointed directly into the wind and everything coming out would blow right back at the tractor.
Plan B had me moving a short distance off the pavement so we could point in a direction where the wind wouldn’t be a problem. Things progressed swimmingly until I apparently tossed in a limb that too closely resembled the petrified oak branches that foiled our efforts last time out.
I instantly realized I had completely forgotten to shop for more robust shear bolts after the previous go-round when the hardware replacement broke as fast as I installed it. Details, details.
I think I’ll remember to buy new bolts this time, especially if I do it on the way home from work today. No time like the present.
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Slow Process
Last year, late in the fall, we kicked off our big fencing project, enlisting the services of a fencing company to remove a portion of old fences, including some very old barbed wire that was entangled in years of tree and brush growth. When that work was done, the ground in those areas was a mess of deep divots with tangles of root remnants protruding every which way.
Two giant piles of root bundles and brush were created from the tree debris that was removed. Slowly and methodically, we worked to burn those piles through the winter and spring. Meanwhile, the fencing crew moved on to build new fences, creating our two paddock areas attached to the barn.
The incredibly wet spring disturbed most of our progress and planning, and the areas of dirt and divots that were too muddy to go near, fell to neglect. We ended up leaving them for nature to address. They eventually became less conspicuous beneath a cover of grass and weeds that grew through the summer.
A couple of weeks ago, when the excavator was here to dig the trench for our new water line to the paddocks, they dug two huge holes and buried what remained of the piles of root bundles that never did burn.
Last fall, a large pile of cut logs from those trees was left at the bottom of our back hill for me to split and stack for firewood. Yesterday, I finally got the last of that pile moved up to the top, near the wood shed.
The uneven terrain remains to be dealt with, but 9-months after we started that first phase of our initial fencing project, we are just now feeling close to having completed the entirety of that goal.
Of course, I still have all that wood to split and stack, but that task will get lost in a never-ending exercise of firewood production here. There are a couple of perfectly burnable dead trees waiting to be felled, and a few new ones that came down in the spring snow-pocalypse, that are all awaiting being cut into logs.
Relative Something 