manual labour feels good

Clean up: spruce grove fence line, part 3

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Yes!  I finally got to the area where the trees had fallen on the fence!

What the area looked like before can be seen in this post.

First, I got rid of part of the tree further into the grove, so I could drag things by.

20180910.cleanup.sprucegrove.fenceline.buring.fallen.tree.after

The next area actually had three fallen trees in it, each having fallen at different time.  One had fallen with its top just touching the fence.  In clearing that out, I discovered it was so rotten, the branches I grabbed to move it just broke off.  Then, when I tried to shift the trunk itself, to decide where and how to saw it, it broke, too.

I cleared away the broken part and left the rest for now.

Another fallen tree was under the three that had fallen the most recently, but it was small enough, and smooth enough, I was able to just pull it out from underneath, then carry it away.

Then I cut branches from the one that had fallen onto the fence, before cutting through the trunk itself, a few feet away from the fence.  Once that piece was free, the reduction of weight shifted the center of gravity, and the rest of the tree lifted and shifted!  I ended up rotating it a bit further, and left it.

This left things clear enough for me to continue on the fence, so I’ve left it for now, too.

Here are the after pictures to match the before pictures from the previous post.

I will leave pruning the little stuff for another day.  If I had a heavy duty enough weed trimmer, I’d just use that, but my little trimmer isn’t able to handle more than grass and smaller weeds.  When I’m done clearing the fence line, I plan to use the trimmer outside of the fence.

Here is another view.

20180910.cleanup.sprucegrove.fenceline.6.after.2

I will leave continuing outside the fence for another time, too.

Also, the beer can I had noticed before turned out to be a bottle. :-D

It’s the brand my late brother drank, which means he was probably the last person to do maintenance on the fence itself.  He passed in 2010, so it’s been there since before then!

20180910.cleanup.sprucegrove.fenceline.oaks

The next section has these oak trees at the fence line, and some juniper.  I’m going to leave the juniper as ground cover, clearing out any other trees that have started to grow in them, and I am deciding on whether or not I should leave the oak to transplant next year.  When I get back to this area, I will decide based on how in the way they are, or not.  I’ve seen quite a few oak saplings about that can be transplanted, so if I do end up having to cut these away, there are others I can use.

At this point, I’m about 3/4 of the way to the gate.  If all goes well, next time I work here, I should be able to reach it. :-D

I love how much better it looks, even if it’s not quite finished.

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: Spruce grove perimeter, reaching the fence!

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It’s been a while, but today I was able to continue working on the perimeter of the spruce grove.  I started off at the little maple I had stopped at, last time, and made it to the fence line. :-D

The last time I went through the area, looking ahead to what needed to be done, it was still green.  The leaves are completely yellow, now!

Here are the before and after pictures. (click on the images to see them better)

The cluster of trees is made of up 3 poplars and 2 spruces.  One of the poplars has lost its top, and I’m pretty sure that’s what’s lying on the ground near the little dead spruces I took out.  There is some dogwood at the bottom of this group of trees that I cleaned up a bit, but otherwise left to grow.  It’s one of those things that will spread quite handily, given the opportunity.

The next section is an open, mossy area.  I’ve been using it to turn around with the riding mower.

Most of the clean up here involved pruning shears instead of saws.

Once that was done, I was at the fence line and had to make some decisions.  How far to the north did I want to go?

In the end, I decided I needed to at least clear out a dead tree that had fallen on the fence, so I could access it for repair.

Though the dead tree was a big poplar, the remains of two other trees had also fallen on it.

The poplar itself was growing on the outside of the fence line.  There are a few larger trees on the outside that I will have to leave, but I will be taking out any smaller trees on that side, as soon as I am able.  I’m not sure about the bylaws in regards to municipal land along the roads, as far as who is responsible for keeping it clear, but I don’t want it to become overgrown with trees like it has on the other side of our gate.

I didn’t do much more in this area, as I want to focus in the other direction, so this section is unfinished.  There are a couple of trees that will be taken out, because they are too close to the fence line.  Otherwise, it’s mostly undergrowth that will need clearing and cleaning.  There seems to be some juniper in there that I intend to leave.

Moving southward, now.

There are some pretty massive spruces here!  There isn’t really a lot that needs doing with the trees themselves; a few low hanging branches and dead branches to clear out.  I could see that, at some point – long ago – someone had gone through and cleared the lower branches, so they were already pretty good.  Again, I spent more time with the pruning shears!  There are quite a few poplar on the outside of the fence that I will have to go back to, later.

If you look in the before picture, at the big spruce to the left of centre, you can almost see a potential problem.  The top of this tree is broken off, and its top is still there, hanging upside down.  I have no idea how long it’s been like this, but at some point, it’s going to fall.  Ideally, we’d get it down before it falls on its own and potentially damages something, but for now, it will have to wait.

It’s starting to open up quite nicely.

Though my priority is clearing the fence line, so it can be accessed and repaired as needed, I might have to clear out some of the dead wood further into the grove.  There is a large spruce that has come down in the area that I am leaving for next year, but I might have to cut away at least some of the branches, just so I can drag out some of the stuff I know I will be dealing with, further down.

And that is my progress for today!  It might be another few days before I can work on it again, so I’m glad I was able to at least get this little corner done.

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: spruce grove, further down the line

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Another lovely day for yard work!

The girls were awesome and hauled away what I took down yesterday, while I made a run into town to get the prescription refills that got missed yesterday.  By the time I got back, they were just finishing, and I could get started! <3

Before I started on the next section of trees, I got the anvil sheers out and worked on the area that was under the overhanging branches.  Here’s a look back at the area I cleared yesterday.

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The wheel barrow is filled with all the little things I pruned out, and a few things dug out of the leaves, etc.

If you look in the wheelbarrow, there is a lighter coloured stem sticking out, to the right of the handle.

Notice it looks slightly… fuzzy?

That’s a wild rose.  And the “fuzzy” is thorns.

Wild rose stems are basically all thorns.  Little, skinny, vicious thorns.

The gloves we have are decent gloves.  Not the highest end, by any means, but good, mid-range quality gloves.

Wild rose thorns can go right through them.  I had to stop and get a daughter to use tweezers to pull one out of a finger, because I wasn’t able to do it one handed in the spot it pierced me!

When I start working further into the spruce grove next year, I plan to keep as much of the wild roses in the undergrowth as I can.  What I’ve cut away here will likely grow back, since I just pruned them.  The root stocks remain.  I will make decisions about them next year, as they grow back.

Here are the before and after photos of today’s progress.

This is basically where I left off, yesterday.  Once I took out the dead and dying tree next to the last tree I worked on yesterday, I was able to finish that one up, taking out more dead branches with the extended pruning saw.

My goal for today was to work my way down to a maple tree.

No, you can’t see it either of the photos above!

Nor the photos below.

Though I did thin out some smaller poplars, I’ve left the bigger ones.  I am hoping, as they get more sunlight throughout the day, they will not lean quite so much as they grow larger.

The farther I worked down the line, the spruces seemed to get thinner, and more crowded.  Quite a few were dead, but I was surprised by how many still had live growth happening.  I still avoided working the inner row of trees, which is where most of these are.  A few times, I did have to prune away dead branches and twigs, so I could access the trees in the outer row better.  It should be interesting to see how they fare, next year.  It is very typical for the lower branches of black spruce to be dead, and it’s not always a reflection on the health of the tree.

As I cleared away the low hanging branches, I found more and more wild roses and, among them, little dogwood bushes.  I took out those that were large enough to be a tripping hazard, and will clear the rest out another day.  When I work further into the grove, I intend to leave any dogwood I find.  They make great underbrush.  It will be interesting to find that balance between open space and undergrowth that I want to foster in here.

But that will wait.

The maple I was using as my goal post was something I was intending to keep, like I am with some of the poplars.  Then I reached it and found that it was not the original tree, but growing out of the base of a rotten stump.

After removing the rotten bits, I found the rot extended quite low into the moss (all along the outer edge of this area, where the poplars and this maple are growing, the moss is several inches deep).  I wasn’t sure if the tree had much support, so I basically yanked it back and forth.  It seems to be holding its own, so I straightened it as much as I could and tamped the ground down to support it.

We shall see if it survives.

When I work on the next section, I should be able to reach the fence line.  After that spruce you see in the background, there is an open space of moss that I’ve been using to turn around with the mower. :-D  There won’t be a lot to clear, there.

There are a number of larger, downed trees around here, too.  Once I reach the fence, I will start working towards the driveway.  The goal is to make the fence accessible, so I’ll be leaving the downed trees unless they are at the fence line.  I know there is at least one that had fallen on the fence itself, before we moved out here, that my older brother had cut loose.  So I will also be examining the fence itself, as I go along, and see what repairs might need to be done.

I’m quite happy with the progress and how it is looking.  The labour is not without it’s price, however!

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Both arms, my lower legs, and even my abdomen, are covered in scratches!

It’s sweaty, dirty and sometimes bloody work.

And I’m loving every minute of it!

The Re-Farmer

Clean up: west yard trees – FINISHED!

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Yes!!!

It is finally done!

The maple grove/west yard trees are now finally cleared, trimmed and cleaned up.  After this, there will just be the basic maintenance to be taken care of in this area for the rest of the year.  Aside from maybe trimming the tall stumps, if we get a full size chainsaw before winter.

What a difference!

When I headed out today, the first priority was to clean up the branches and trees from last time.  In the process, I went digging around for downed branches under the last bit of trees I needed to work on, grabbed what I thought was a branch and found…

… metal.

This is what I dragged out.

I haven’t the foggiest clue what it is.

It went on the junk pile by the old garden shed.

Once I did that, I broke out the weed trimmer and went to town in all the areas I’ve been working on that hadn’t been trimmed yet.

Oh, my, does it ever look awesome!!!  (click on the pictures)

While I was using the weed trimmer, I kept having to stop and pull more branches out of the dead leaves, as I found them with the line on the trimmer.  My daughters cleaned away what they could find.  I had been taking what I cleared out of the last section (photos below) to the pile out of the yard, but by the end of the day, I was getting too tired to do both.  It was quite pleasant to work among the trees, but once I got out of the yard with the wheel barrow, or dragging a tree or two, it was like walking into a wall of heat.  So I started leaving things to the side, then the girls did a fantastic job of cleaning it all away, later.

While I wasn’t going to work on the rest of the fence line, I did go in with the weed trimmer.  I took the before picture when I last worked in the area a few days ago.

There was just the last bit to work on, over by the power pole (see below).  I went into it with the weed trimmer as much as I could, but there was a section by the gooseberry bush I couldn’t reach, because I kept getting stabbed by low hanging and dead branches!

This side will probably need to be thinned down more, but I will wait and see how the remaining trees do over the next year or two.  If the maples do well, I might trim the elms to give them more room to grow, because maples can get so huge.  If the elms do well, I may trim the maples.  The maple I’m standing next to as I take the photo (in the foreground, to the right) is going to need thinning, but it can wait.

Several times, I started to clear a maple, then thought, oh… it’s actually an elm.  No, it’s a maple.  No, it’s… both??

There were groups of trees where maple and elm were growing against each other.  !!

This next section shows some apple trees.

In the before picture, there is a crab apple tree that is part of the row of crab apples in the middle of this area, but this one had so many little apple trees growing around it.  Likely self seeded, as apples fell over the years.  As I went through them, trying to figure out what to keep and what to take out, I discovered the biggest one – the one that would have been originally planted – was almost entirely dead.  It had two younger ones growing next to it, so I left those.  They are too close together, but I will see which of them does better over the next few years, before deciding if they need to be thinned more.

The major challenge was the big ornamental apple tree.  The branches were so twisted and wrapped around each other, with living tangled up with the dead.  It was a struggle to get them free of each other.  Most of it was growing towards the East – the morning sun would be the only real sunlight it would be getting – and that’s there all the little apples is had are hanging from.

There were so many dead branches higher up on all of these trees.  The extended pruning saw got quite a workout.  Not just to pull down or cut dead branches, but to untangle them to get them down.

Sadly, I was not able to use my little electric chain saw/extended pole pruner.  I checked it over thoroughly (it’s really designed to be idiot proof) and everything looked good.  Yet when I tried to use it, it started screaming and immediately began to jam.  It was also dripping chain oil. :-(

Time to see how long the warranty is for. :-(  Or if it’s still covered.  All I can think of that’s different that might be an issue is the chain oil.  The oil it came with was perfectly clear, like water.  The chain oil I have now is generic, and red.  The paperwork did recommend using their brand of chain oil, but it seems not to be available in Canada.

This rather sucks, because it did make work go much faster, when it was working!

Still, I have the tools I need to do the job, and the next time I am able to work on the trees, it will be at the spruce grove!  Woo Hoo!!!

I love this work. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean up; west fence line, moving north

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It’s been a much cooler day today, so I took advantage of it and continued working along our west fence line.

In all, the before and after photos below represent about 2 1/2 hours work.  This includes pausing to take some video, and also pausing to drag away the branches and tree trunks I took down.

What a job!

Let’s start at that group of three maples, where I left off last time. Continue reading →

Clean Up: Maple Grove, evening progress

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I wrote up my last post while taking a hydration break from working in the maple grove.  By the time I was done, I found myself nodding off at the keyboard.  I figured lying down wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Three hours later… :-o

But, I’ve got it done as much as I can for now.

Here are the before and after pictures of the two North rows.

I cleared out two of the tree spruces in the foreground of the second picture.  The two I took out had a few green sprigs here and there, but were otherwise dead.  I also cut off the dead branches from the one in the middle.  I am hoping that, now that it’s open and clear, it will survive.

The remaining spruces in that northernmost row are doing pretty good.  I trimmed the lowest branches, as well as the dead ones that I could reach with a hand saw.  The dead ones were mostly on the south side of the trees, where they had no light.  The other living spruce trees, I only took off what was in my way as I moved around.  I will finish cutting away the dead branches when my birthday gift comes in. :-)

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This is the remains of a row of raspberry bushes.  I can see some dead canes from years past, but no fresh canes in this area.

To the right, you can also see a gooseberry bush I found.  I had cleared out a broadleaf tree that was between two spruces, and discovered the gooseberry under it!

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.big.gooseberry

Then there’s this gooseberry bush, in dire need of having the deadwood cut away.  It’s growing next to a chokecherry tree, which was also overgrown and in need of pruning at its base.

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.gooseberry.chokecherry.cleared

It was amazing how cutting just one sucker at the bottom of the chokecherry tree cleared almost everything up!  A few downward hanging branches to clear away, and various saplings, burdock and stinging nettle to clear away at the base, and what a difference!  I even found some raspberry bushes with baby berries on them.

The gooseberry, on the other hand, has almost no sign of berries on it at all, and what little it does have are not looking good.

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.appletree.before

This is the very end of the “raspberry” row, with an apple tree near the compost pile.  There’s even a lonely little asparagus fern growing in here!

20180702.cleanup.maplegrove.eastside.appletree.after

I found more salvageable raspberry canes.  After cutting away some lower branches and saplings at the base of the apple tree (including maple and elm saplings), it was basically just weeding and removing old raspberry canes.  There are some plants in there I recognize as flowers my mother planted, so I tried to avoid taking those out.  Lots of creeping charlie and burdock in here.

At this point, I called it a night.  Which worked out perfectly, because that’s when I got a call from the second tree care company about coming over.  It was another father and sons team. :-)

When they got here, I showed them the areas I wanted work done on, plus the trees to come down.  He asked questions about how far back I wanted to cut things (basically, enough to not have to do this again for 5 years).  He wanted to know about the overhanging branches, which would normally be left if they are not touching the lines.  One of them is a very healthy maple tree, and cutting it back would mean removing pretty much half the tree.  When I pointed out it was from those overhanging branches that we got the burned branch from, and that it had happened before, causing a power outage, he understood why I didn’t want ANY overhanging branches at all.  They even measured the trunks of the trees that will be taken down, including the dead spruce.  They had to take into account being able to get their equipment in, too, and I told them about the three different gates that were available.  We also talked about cleanup.  He charges extra if they bring in a chipper, but I did say I wanted to keep the chips for mulch, and to keep the bigger wood, too.  He mentioned they don’t usually chip dead branches, because it dulls the cutting edges, but the stuff they’ll be cutting back will mostly be life branches.

He took a whole bunch of notes, and I will get the estimate emailed to me.

I told him about how we don’t own the land, and that I am getting estimates to talk to my mother and brother about before a decision is made, and that I’m hoping to get it done in the fall.  Or spring, if the cost is higher (which I suspect it will be, with these guys, but we shall see).  He was good with fall, mentioning after August is when they’d be available to do the work, so that works out.

And that’s it for the next while.  Tomorrow will be a trip to the city for my daughter, which should give my body time to rest.  Feeling pretty stiff and sore right now! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: Maple Grove, garden path

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We had some much more pleasant temperatures today, so I headed out to do some work in the maple grove this evening.

After the tree care guy came to give us an estimate, I decided to focus first on clearing the old garden path.  Whether we hire these guys, or the company coming to give a quote on Monday, they will need to bring equipment in to access the trees they will be cutting clear from the power lines.  Good enough reason to start at the old garden path.

This is what it looked like before.

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The deadwood on the ground here is partially cut, and it made up of several trees.  Elm and maple, from the looks of it.

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This photo was taken back in May, and you can see where the path is supposed to be in the background.

I also worked my way along the north row of trees, bordering the garden, and heading towards the garden shed.  I started off by using the weed trimmer to take town the tall grass and weeds, so that I could at lease see the branches and trunks.

Then I started dragging stuff out.  This photo is of JUST the deadwood I pulled out of the grass.

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Almost all of this is just from that blocked garden path!  Even after this, I kept finding more, as I walked back and forth and I would step on something.  I’d then go to pick up what I expected to be a small branch, often finding myself pulling out something 6-7 feet long, and completely buried in grass and leaves!

After I cleaned out the stuff already on the ground, I started taking out the dead spruces on either side of the path, and cut back the other trees that I had pulled the deadwood out of.  They were mostly dead, already.  I also took out another small dead spruce tree that was near the big dead one that will be coming down when we get the lines cleared.  I almost left a young elm to grow, until I clued in to how close it was to the big dead spruce.  I looked up and, sure enough, the elm was directly below the power lines.

So that had to go.

Along with the dead stuff, I also cleaned up some suckers at the bases of other trees, or growing out of stumps.  Some of those suckers had been growing long enough to almost be trees all on their own.  For the trees I took down, I left fairly tall stumps to make it easier to see them until I can cut them at ground level.  A fair bit is being left until my birthday present arrives. :-D

I finished off with the weed trimmer again.

Here are the after pictures.

20180630.cleanup.maplegrove.gardenpath.after

A couple of the stumps near the centre of the picture were already there, hidden by the suckers growing out of them.  The old garden path is now open!

The big dead spruce tree that will come down is the one with the big rock next to it.  There is also a young maple kind of by itself there right now, and I will be cutting that down when my birthday present gets here.  It’s directly under the power lines, too, and already grown tall enough to almost touch them!

20180630.cleanup.maplegrove.near.gardenpath.after

This photo was taken from near the big dead spruce tree.  The main garden area is completely overgrown, but it was so roughly plowed, mowing is not an option.  It’s not a priority right now.

There are three spruces next to each other, just right of centre in the photo.  I am hoping the one in the middle can be salvaged.  The other two are too far gone.

On the garden side, starting from about where those spruces are (I think they are Colorado blues), is the old row a raspberries.  It’s completely choked out with crab grass and weeds, and overshadowed by mostly dead trees, with a very few canes trying to grow.  Another area that is not a priority right now.  When the time comes, we plan to have a raspberry patch with three different varieties, including one with gold coloured berries, that mature at different times.  That way, we will be harvesting berries from July through September. :-)

All in good time.

20180630.cleanup.maplegrove.near.gardenpath.lookingeast

I plan to work my way down these two rows of trees, next.  Where the big rock is, is the garden tap.  It’s got a couple of dead trees by it, as well as a live one.  They will all come down to clear the tap, and the buried pipe that leads to the house.  I’m hoping the roots haven’t caused any problems.  I have yet to hook it up at the house end to test it out, since it’s barely accessible right now.

There are two old tillers that have been sitting there for years, one covered with a piece of tin, the other with an old rug.  They should still be salvageable, so I am hoping to be able to move them into a shed or maybe the barn, to get them out of the weather.

Once this area is done, I will turn my attention to the West side of the maple grove.  Lots of deadfall in there, too.

The really big job is going to be dealing with the trees to the North of the grove, that has been so densely planted with trees.

While doing this outside, I also will be working on packing up the old kitchen, so we can get that cleaned out and looking good again.  I want to get that done within the next week.  I’d like to be able to open the door and not worry about the cats getting int. :-)

Lots to do!  :-)

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: lilacs – after

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It’s been another scorcher today, but I decided to work on the lilac row in the West yard.  It was shady, and I made sure to have a water bottle with me to stay hydrated.  By mid-afternoon, though, the sun had moved far enough that my shade was gone, and it was time to stop.

Most of the work was done around just one old lilac bush!

Here is the before picture, from when I first started working in this section.

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Then after I’d cut away the false spirea (and the branch that fell on it after hitting the power line!).

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Finally, here is how it looks now.

20180620.cleanup.bushes.east.lilacs.after

Lots of skinny little dead branches among the skinny little live branches! :-D  Several dead main trunks were cleaned away.  There was quite a lot of undergrowth behind the lilacs that needed to be cleared away, just to reach the lilacs themselves.  In one lilac bush towards the left in the photo, I didn’t even have to cut the trunks.  They just pulled out of the ground, or came out easily with a twist.

At some point, we’ll have to rake under there to clean up the many tiny dead twigs and branches in the leaves.  For now, I am focusing on just getting the big stuff cleaned and cleared out, while slowly working my way down the row.

It’s much slower work with the lilacs, since it involves removing so many little things, compared to working on the big trees, that’s for sure!

The Re-Farmer

Area Shift

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It was another really hot day today, so outdoor work was limited.

My daughter and I loaded the items from the sun room that we will not be using, into the storage shed, and noticed that stinking nettle was starting to crowd the stairs.  The area is in need of another mow, too.  So before things go too hot, I decided to clear away the nettles, then maybe do some mowing.

I cleared away the nettles, but it was hot enough that I didn’t want to stress the motor on the mower.

Instead, I shifted to a different area.

Some time soon, the electrician will be coming by to install the broken power pole, and also hook electricity back up to the barn.  There are some trees between the main pole, and the one between it and the barn, that will be in the way of the wires and the installation.

So I started cutting them back.

Ideally, I’d be taking them down completely.  They seem to have sprouted out of a stone pile, around a support wire for the power pole, and I could tell that they had been cut back several times in the past.  Just not recently.

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There is only two trees here; a maple and an elm.  This photo is after I’d cut away a substantial amount on one side, stopping when it simply became too hot to continue.

It’s the branches on the other side, however, that are in the way of where the power line is going to do.

Do you see the problem?

Yeah.  The car.

My father’s old car has been parked there for quite a few years.  Long enough that I think the tires are now flat.  As far as I know, however, it can still be repaired and made roadworthy without too much work; it’s not one of the scrap vehicles lying about.

If I start cutting the branches on that side, they are going to fall right on the car.

I’ve been wondering if we’d be able to pop it in neutral and push it out of the way.  If we manage it, though (I have no idea if we’ll even try, yet), it would need to be pushed back again.  We’ll have to decide soon, since I would like to have those trees cut back before the electrician needs to work in the area.

It’s unfortunate the car wasn’t parked in one of the sides of the garage, or even one of the sheds that used to shelter a tractor.  Mind you, that shed has a roof like a sieve, now, and I’d really like to have it torn down, eventually.

20180619.cleared.power.pole.trees

This is the pile of what I’ve cleared away so far.  They are not broken down much at all, to it’s really mostly air.  Still, there are some very large sections of tree in there!

I am beginning to foresee a potential problem with having piles of cut and pruned tree pieces all over the place.

The Re-Farmer

Clean Up: Firepit area gate

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After cleaning up in the bushes near the fire pit yesterday, today’s goal was to access the gate by the fire pit, before continuing in that area.  We needed someplace to pile the wood we’re cleaning out.

Before I could start on that, though, my younger daughter and I made a trip into town.  She had dropped off some resumes a few days ago.  The next day, one place called back, but she was with me at the shop with the mower, so they asked her to call back the next day.

That was yesterday.  They booked an interview with her for this morning.

And by “interview”, it turned out they meant, “what hours can you work and here are your free t-shirts.”

Starting next week, my daughter begins training as a cashier at the grocery store we usually shop at. :-D

That was a nice way to start the day!

So I didn’t get started on accessing the gate until this afternoon.

Here is what it looked like before.

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The far end of the gate is completely hidden by overgrown lilacs, caraganas and a maple tree.

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The picket fence thing that was there appeared to be attached to the barb wire gate only by this length of wire, twisted around, and one section of the top barb wire looped around a board.   So it wasn’t going to take much to separate them.

But first, I needed to clear the gate post.

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Most of what I had to clear away was from a lilac bush, including a lot of dead branches and stems.  My mother likely planted it there, so I didn’t want to cut it all away.  The maple would have seeded itself, and likely the caragana as well.

I’ve left most of the caragana for now, but when it comes time to take down the two dead spruce trees, we might have to cut those back more.  We shall see when the time comes.

That done, I could open the barb wire gate.

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The closure of which promptly broke in my hands.

All the wood there is really quite rotten.

Some of the barb wire has come loose from the posts.  The fence part also had boards coming loose.  It’s all really quite rotten.

Have I mentioned that much of the wood around here is really old and rotten?  I think I might have… ;-)

It took some doing to get the fence part loose.  Hidden in the tall grass were fallen branches that had to be moved, and the grass itself – including years of thatch – had a good grip on the bottom of it!

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I decided to leave the fence part like this for now, so that it’s visible.  There are so many nails in that thing, I don’t want to take any chances of someone stepping on it.

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Speaking of nails, it turned out that part of the fence was indeed attached, by wire, to the gate post.  This length of board, however, was no longer attached to the fence part.  Even with all those nails!

I count 20.

While getting all this open, I could see something blue peaking through the grass.  Once done, I yanked it out to see what it was.

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It seems to be a bell for a child’s bike.

Why was it there, and how many years as has it been there?

That done, I moved the barb wire gate to the outside of the yard, then cleaned up all the cut wood from clearing the gate, plus the pile from yesterday.

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Since I had all that handy wood, I fixed the broken closure on the gate.

Here is the after picture.

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There’s going to be a lot more to be added to the pile over the next while, so I am leaving the gate open for now.

All of this was about two hours of work.  Not too shabby!  I’ve stopped for the afternoon, though.  I plan to continue where I left off yesterday, but we were getting into the hotted part of the day, so I will wait until the early evening, when it starts to get cooler.  Now that this is done, I’ll be able to clean things up right away, too.

I placed the pile far enough away to completely clear the open gate, plus leave room to access the fence, if necessary.  Seeing the fence from this side, I was reminded that, at some point, it would be good to re-fence the entire house yard.  All of it, including the fence lines that are bordered by roads, if possible.  I say “if possible” because they are so full of trees, and my mother’s lilac border along the garden section.  It would be good to have something other than barbed wire fencing and gates!  I would still want to have a gate here, by the fire pit, and the one by the garden.  I’d even like to add another gate to the south fence line, so that we could drive into the yard at one end, then out again at the other.

Hmmm.  Thinking of it that way, it might just be easier to build a new fence on the other side of the driveway.   And if we do that, may as well extend to the fence that’s keeping the renter’s cows out.  Get rid of the current house yard fencing, completely.  Wow.  That would really extend the size of our yard!

That, however, is likely many years into the future.  Still, it’s something we can talk about and plan for.

Later.

I have to keep reminding myself.  This year is our “figure it out” year, and the focus for now is on the house and yard.

That is plenty of work all on its own! :-)

The Re-Farmer