Clearing Ground

one thing about this property that i liked was the board fences. they are not ideal, but such a good base to have, and so work-saving! or so i thought. the owner had cattle in here before, so he had barbed wire up. i knew i had to take it down, but what i didn't realize was that 1) in order to take it down, i was going to have to wrestle with years--and i do mean years--of neglect, that had allowed ivy to wrap around the fences and posts, some of the vines with 2" diameters; and that 2) the ivy is, in fact, poison oak. sigh. i spent a few hours clearing part of the fence, wrestling with enormous stems and runners that slapped me in the face, and then wrenching the hooks free from the posts so i could wrangle the barbed wire. 2 days and 4-5 hours gave me 20-50 feet of cleared fence line.

today, hubs came out with the hedge trimmers and helped. it went a lot faster, and the back fence line is now free of barbed wire, although we still need to clear the stems from the posts. and i did it all with a toddler strapped to my back. i feel like an old woman. but we are making headway, slowly slowly slowly . . .

here you can see the ridiculous crop of poison oak. it's bumper. and this looks at least 50% better.

cleared!

my stinker, of whom i can take the rare decent photo, because she always wants to Come See!

chiefie!