Since we are starting to use the fire pit area fairly regularly, and plan to use it more, I decided to start cleaning up the next area of trees and bushes nearby.  There is a linden tree at the end of a row that I wanted to clear the base of, but before I could get to it, I started clearing at a plum tree next to it.

I forgot to take a before picture, but here is how it looked before I started on the linden tree.

The poor plum tree is really struggling.  It was being choked out by a caragana that I cut away, and has a lot of dead and dying branches.  I am hoping, as things are cleared out, it will become stronger.

It does have baby plums, though!

This variety of plums have very small, hard red fruit.  Not much good for eating, but I remember my dad had made wine with them.  I was pretty young and probably never got a taste of it, but I seem to remember it being quite enjoyed by the adults.

This is the pile I started, with the dead wood from around the plum tree, the caragana that was crowding it, and the first sucker from the linden tree that I’d cut away.

Here is a before picture of the linden tree.  You can’t even tell I’ve already cut some away.

My mother told me that, before she moved away from the farm, she kept the base of the linden tree clear of suckers, so I will continue that.  It has clearly been many years since they’ve been cleared away!  Some were huge and lying on the ground long enough to be partly buried in decayed leaves.

Linden wood, I discovered, is incredibly soft.  I was able to saw through the suckers like they were barely there!  In one group, because of how close they were, I ended up cutting three of them at the same time, and it was still easy to saw through them all!

I also found a lot of dead branches stuck among the suckers, and others handing above.  The bottom branches of the main truck were also either dead or mostly dead, hidden away by the foliage from the suckers growing below.

Once I started cutting I could see, at the base of the trunk, where my mother had been cutting away over the years.

Here is how it looks now.

I probably shouldn’t have, but I did leave one sucker be, just trimming away some of the lower branches.  Unlike the other ones, this one was growing upwards and straight.

Aside from cutting away self-sown mystery saplings among the debris, this is just the difference of cutting away the suckers and taking out the deadwood.  Later, I plan to take a rake to it and get the bits of branches and twigs left behind, then take the weed trimmer to it.

There is a bush directly behind it that is looking like it has a lot of deadwood on it, but I won’t start working back there, quite yet.

I had started out trying to keep the deadwood and the green wood in separate piles, but after a while, just gave up!  We will sort through it as we break it down and move it elsewhere.

Our piles for the fire pit are getting a bit big!

This is our “small stuff” pile.  Twigs and small branches, mostly.  Just today, I added more deadwood that I’d pulled down from the area behind the other house.  I wasn’t up to breaking them down, first.

Then there are the bigger logs, including some that have been cut to fire pit length.  On the far left of the photo are a bunch of logs I’d cut from the big dead branch I’d cut free from one of the nearby maples.  It was one of the things I had to clean up before I could mow.  I didn’t even break it all down; just enough to more easily move the top length to the “small stuff” pile.

The branch I’d found at the fence line earlier, I just left at the fence line for now.  We are adding deadwood faster than we are using it for fuel for our wiener roasts, and the “small stuff” pile is getting too big!  As for the greenwood, I don’t even know where we’re going to put those, for now.  I don’t want to add much more to the pile by the log cabin, and the one by the garage is pretty huge.

Maybe if I can get that gate by the fire pit open, we can start another greenwood pile outside the yard, closer to where I’m actually working.

It doesn’t take much to make a big difference!

The Re-Farmer