December 13, 2010
Here are a couple of photos taken last winter, showing the scraggly trees and brush to the southeast of the house. If you look closely, especially in the first photo, you can see the tangle of brambles that made the area all but impenetrable. With few exceptions the trees are in poor shape, having grown too densely under the canopy of large trees that were logged off before we bought the property.
March 26, 2011
In the spring we began clearing the area, pushing our tractor through the dense tangles of brambles and removing trees. We hesitate to remove any trees but the majority of these were in such poor shape that it was no great loss to remove them. Once the area is cleared, much of it will be replanted with a variety of fruit trees.
April 8, 2011
By early April we had tackled most of the brambles and scrub trees. And we also dug up hundreds of pieces of old rusty fence wire that was buried just below the surface.
April 13, 2011
With the trees out of the way we were left with a field of stumps, and for the first time a view of the house from the southeast. This area slopes gently to the south, which is ideal for what we have in mind.
April 15, 2011
Jay attacked the stumps with a rented stump grinder. It took two days of grinding to grind them all down below the surface.
May 12, 2011
By early May we finished removing the trees and brush, grinding the stumps down, and scraping the remaining stubble to remove small shrubs and roots near the surface. The leaves are coming in nicely and the dogwoods have started to bloom.
May 18, 2011
All our clearing activity left us with two huge piles of brush and remains of trees, which you can just see way in the back of the photos below. Each of the two piles was about 20 feet wide, 40 feet long, and 8 feet high. We hired Absolute Tree Service, whom we used back in 2009 when we began clearing land for the house, to turn these huge piles of brush into a huge pile of wood chips that we will use to mulch the whole area.
