Clearing brush for access, construction and fire safety has been our constant occupation, especially since we've had such a rainy summer.
In order to preserve the critical vegetation mat, we're clearing the home acre by chainsaw instead of with heavy equipment. As you'll see by the mountains of brush, it's a LOT of cutting and hauling... and we still have the eastern half-acre left to do!! Eventually we'll be sorting all the brush into separate piles since we plan to use most of it to weave a wattle fence around the home acre and veggie garden. Good thing that the spruce right here is smaller diameter, very straight, and very supple! The few bigger trees (4+ inches) will become firewood (or go onto a bonfire if it's punky) and all the random little bits and slash from limbing out the fencing will get mulched to fill in low spots along the driveway (no mulch near the cabin, it's a red carpet invitation for carpenter ants and cabin fires!!)
We were lucky that G's folks helped us out with some of the clearing on the NW corner during their visit... but it's just not right to force houseguests into slave labor even if they are family :D Now we'll need to haul "Mount Wardle" from the NW corner to the "Wall o' Brush" long the southern border so we can put our storage and wood sheds in the NW corner easily accessible from the front porch.
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The end of the driveway, as far as we got last year other than the immediate cabin construction site. |
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The southern border, extending east from the driveway, and the tail end of the Wall o' Brush. |
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The Wall o' Brush extending 100' from the driveway, 4' high and 8' wide.
And that's just HALF of what we've cleared, which is only half of what we need to clear. |
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The western border, extending north from the driveway up to Mount Wardle.
And Ripley, sneaking into shot again!! |
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Mount Wardle -- all the brush from the NW corner.
Don't be fooled by scale, this pile is nearly 8' tall and 20' in diameter!
That blue tarp right in front of it is covering a *full pallet* of sheathing. |
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Alas, we've only made it to the corner of the back porch... we still have nearly all of the eastern half-acre to go! |
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But at least we have a little more of an opening outside the front porch now instead of being claustrophobic in the trees! |
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And for some perspective and scale... this shot was taken from the back porch roof and shows the entire SW corner (nearly 1/4 acre) with Sonja (our full-size Dodge pickup) in the foreground. It was all just as dense as the surrounding area.
Phew, just looking at it makes me tired all over again!! |
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