Clearing the Driveway Trees

 Clearing the Driveway Trees

Here is a closer view of the two trees we cleaned up near the top of the driveway. The top picture is Carley lounging with Butterbean in the shade before we get to work. You can also see some of the brush that has not yet been cleared on the right. In the third picture you can see that we used some of the tall grasses to mulch under the big trees. If you have better eyesight than me you can also see the monstrous stack of tomato cages being held in place with a set of tires. We removed them while slowly clearing the old garden area. I can't see those things in person from two feet away, let alone in these pictures, but there are about 30 of them stacked in the second and third photos. I only whacked one with the machete one time, which I thought was pretty good.

Clearing the Main Pasture

Clearing the Main Pasture

We've slowly but surely been working on clearing the main pasture. It had been used as a garden area by the previous owner, but it hasn't been cleared or maintained for about two years. Eventually, this clearing will become the flower/herb garden on the shadier Northern side of the clearing up the hill from the home site. But before we build the home in the opening we're clearing and leveling a 40' x 60'  in the garden area and planting the border shrubs in order to get married in what will become the garden. Pee-Paw is going to build an arbor for us to stand under at the West end of the garden, in front of the big pine you can see in the third picture. The first two pictures show a before and after of the field from a big day of clearing. If you look for the light pole in both photographs it's easier to figure out what is where. The main difference is that we cleared all of the brush that was standing about 4' tall in the entire clearing. We also removed trees in the strip of blackberries that we plan to keep there, for at least one more year of harvesting. There are plenty of wild blackberry patches all over the property, so we know we'll keep some of them around, but all of them just aren't necessary. Probably about 10' x 30' of blackberries are in that strip you can see more closely on the right in the third picture. We also removed the smaller trees beneath the two large trees on this side of the driveway. Notice how you can see the trunks in the second picture, but not the first picture. The strip of green in front of the light pole in the second picture is the same strip as seen from the closer view in the right of the third picture, looking West at the big pine.

The Turn Around

The Turn Around

This little turn around, that encircles the 5 or so trees in the center, wasn't too overgrown since it's back in the pines a little.  But Pee-Paw (Meredithe's father) stopped by with a battery powered sawzall so we decided to drop all of the low hanging limbs and remove a couple of stumps while we had the tool. It definitely made a big difference in clearance, both on the sides as well as above and below the truck. The foliage visible in the center of the circle is just a brush pile we created from the downed limbs, which will eventually be removed. There's a main turnaround at the top of the driveway, out in the clearing near the front of the property which we had been using more frequently. But now that the weather is warming up (it's already hitting the 80's) having this shady spot to turn around and park the truck in will be awesome! It's also the main hub of the property, so it will eventually be cleaned up and planted, maybe have a fountain or some other cool feature, but just having it opened up is highly beneficial. Think of it like the entryway to the future food forest. There's an old gate on the driveway in an old barbed wire fence line that runs East-West through the center of the property and this is just on the North side of that. There are three main "roads" that branch off of it. The picture was taken from the driveway leading in, facing North. The road to the right heads downhill to the muscadines, the road to the left to another clearing.