I won’t be able to continue cleaning up the perimeter of the spruce grove for a while, yet, but this evening, I decided to walk through it, check things out and take some photos of what it looks like now, so I can go over them later and plan ahead for when I work in the area next year.

Mostly, though, I wanted to go along the fence line I plan to work on soon, and especially check on the fence where I knew a tree fell on it.

Here’s a look at what I’ll be working on in that area.

In this first photo, you’re actually seeing the tops of two trees.  In the foreground, to the right, is the top of a tree that fell some time ago.  On the other side of the fence is the top of the tree my brother had cut off, to get its weight off the barbed wire to the right of the fence post.

Here, you can see the mess of dead branches, and the section of barbed wire that was damaged by the fallen tree.

All along the fence line, I am seeing trees that have sown themselves on the outside of the fence.  In the section of fence line going in the other direction, some have been there so long, they are full sized, mature trees.  I’ll just have to clean them up and leave them.  However, going towards the gate, the self-sown trees are still quite little, and I want to clean them out while it’s still easy to do.  This had not been done between the fence and ditch on the far side of the gate.  It’s not just overgrown, but practically a forest.  This affects ditch drainage and, of course, visibility.

I have no plans at this point for clearing that out, except perhaps what needs to be done for visibility.  For now, I need to just focus on the inner yard.

The first of the above photos shows the two, quite large, trees that have come down, with one of them landing on the fence.  A third tree is caught up in the mess, too.

I found this interesting…

The damaged barbed wire is propped up with a stick!  I’m guessing my older brother did this, after cutting the tree loose from the wire.

Also, that pile on the other side of the stick?

That’s an ant hill.  Red ants like to build big nests like that, using spruce needles.

I did not try to get close enough to see if it’s an active nest.  Yet.

Oh, look.  Another Bud Light can.

I’ve found a number of beer cans around the place.  I think my late brother was the only one to drink that brand of beer.  Since he died in the early summer of 2010, that means these have been sitting around for a minimum of about 9 years.  It looks like no one has gone through here to clean things up in at least that amount of time, too.

This is why the tree came down.  Ant damage.  From the freshness of the exposed wood, I’d say this tree fell within the past year, year and a half, at most.

The other tree came down for the same reason, though quite a while ago, from how much the wood is weathered.

This makes at least three large spruces that have come down after being weakened by ants, that I have found.  While there were many other downed trees scattered about the spruce grove, there are also a significant number of dead spruces still standing.  And there’s no real way to see if any of them have ant damage, just by looking at them.

Which is why I look forward to having the tools to start cutting them down, before they fall and cause more damage.

This undergrowth will be kept, after we clean the dead trees off of it.  I think it’s a type of juniper.

There is an area full of wild roses, closer to the house, that will be cleaned up, but also kept.

I took quite a few more photos, though less than I would have, were it were not so difficult to wrestle my way through the undergrowth and dead trees and branches.

Cleaning up this area is going to be a huge job.  I’m hoping by the time we get to it, we’ll not only have a full size chain saw, but some sort of large wagon or small trailer we can use to help haul things away more easily.  All the work done in the maple grove was downright easy compared to what is going to need doing in here!!  I would not be surprised if it takes me a couple of summers to finish, at least.

At least I’ve got some idea of what we’ll be facing in there!

The Re-Farmer