First, he goes around with the chainsaw and cuts down everything small or yucky in about a 200 square foot section. Most of these are dense thin saplings, too large to cut through with a scythe. Some are clumped, some have thorns, some are larger trees that are crooked or otherwise unpleasant.
He also sections the larger trees for easy moving later. The oak he puts aside into a good firewood pile. (And he can use the bucket of the tractor to move quantities of the oak sections.
That takes almost no time, even though he's using a dull chain. He cuts right at ground level, so hits dirt sometimes, and so using the duller chain is worth the little extra cutting time. He's not dulling a nice new blade.
Then he stacks into piles, roughly, and then compresses a few of the piles together to make a bigger pile. He needs to make stacks because while the tractor can move piles, the single saplings are so flush with the ground, he can't move those very well. They need the bulk of the combined group.
And it's worth it to have the piles because that way, he has the "mess" somewhat contained: safer to work in, more encouraging to view the progress.
He started on Monday with the path to the creek. Above you can see the part he cleared (the creek, with some bushes fallen into it, is hidden on the left of the photo; the center is the path for the fence). Below you can see the part he hasn't cleared, just to the right of the cleared path.
When I first saw what he'd been working on, I was a bit disappointed. He has so much to clear! The section completed is nice, but I wanted four times that amount done! Ten times the amount!
But then I realized that what he has cleared in a day or two is probably about equal to what he spent all last winter clearing, where our stonefruit orchard is now. The chainsaw and tractor have helped a lot, leaving me free to homeschool the boys and work. The above photo shows what he's done. The below photo shows the next section he has to work on (and, really, all sections in the lower pasture that remain).
It's an amazing amount of overgrowth.
It was cold enough last night that, midafternoon when the boys and I went to visit Phil, there was ice on Hog Creek. I was surprised that ice could remain so long on a fairly robust little stream, but, well, it is cold.
As we hiked back, Abraham discovered what we think is the jawbone of a fox. He wasn't sure he wanted to touch it, but he did for posterity (this photo).
My household work took an odd turn today. Lately the pump in the motor home has been freezing overnight, but by midday gets thawed enough that we can run the water. We tried putting a pilot light in with the water last night, but that turned out to be totally counter-productive. The door wouldn't close all the way with the light in there, and with weather in the teens overnight, we think that the water in the storage tank froze solid. To have no running hot water is too bad; to have no running water at all is astonishingly difficult.
I had no recollection of how we managed water issues last winter. I do know I did the dishes in plastic tubs in the barn (and made the family eat bread two meals a day so I didn't have to do many dishes. But I had forgotten the Berkey we set up in the bathroom so we had (thawed) water to drink. And the plastic camping bag so I had a way to wash my hands. It's probably time to break those out again.
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