I’ve got some before photos, and some taken during the clean up.  By this point, I had pretty much stopped with the pruning shears, except to clear things that were in the way.

These three before pictures were taken in an area just before there a tree had fallen on the fence.  I wanted to at least clear that area, as my goal for the day.

One thing that was noticeable is that, over the years, there was some maintenance done around here.  Despite the weird tops of some of the fence posts, they are all good posts, and still straight.  There is a bit of wiggle on them, but that could be attributed to how dry it has been.  The fence wire itself would also have been good, if trees hadn’t fallen on it!

I didn’t want to go too far into the grove, but this tree top had to go.  It was in the way of clearing things out.  The stump of the tree can be seen where I’d cleared previously, near the open, mossy area.

I also went outside the fence to move away the top of the tree that fell on the fence.

This is what my older brother had cut, to get it off the fence itself, shortly after we moved out here.  For now, I’m just leaving this here.  It will need to be cut down a bit before being hauled away, due to its size.

Here’s where it had fallen on the fence.  I took a closer look at that ant hill, and there’s no sign of ants left in it.  It has been abandoned.  Which is good, because I had to cut some small trees out of it!

Then I made some discoveries.

In the next section of fence, I found the end of a string of Christmas lights.

Notice the wire it is wrapped around.  If you follow it up, you can see it end in a loop.

In this next photo, you can see where it should be.

This is where two lengths of barbed wire were joined together, but when the tree fell on the fence, on end broke off.

Once the fence line is clear, I will be repairing this.  I even found a tool for tightening fence wire that I can use; one of the few useful things that didn’t disappear while this place was empty!

I started unwinding the Christmas lights and found…

… the fallen tree had also unplugged the string of lights.

This is where it had been plugged into.  This string of lights reaches to the outlet box and still works.  I will leave it for now.  Eventually, I want to replace them with LED lights.

After this, it was time to climb back through the fence and start clearing on the inside, which will be in my next post. :-)

The Re-Farmer