I've been finishing the east fence line. I thought I'd share some practical info on clearing out these weeds. Above is my truck loaded with just a portion of the outside of the fence... I have to clear both sides of the fence because the weeds grow on both sides, and there are also trees that grow into the fence that need to be removed.
I'm wondering if I should just take the fence down and keep this area mowed next year. The fencing is a boundary, and if I get a dog or chickens again in the future, I think I'll wish I had kept it. So I'll wait and decide on that next spring.
When we first moved here we had two dogs. One was an older dog who was blind and the other was a younger female, we think 1/2 German shepherd and 1/2 Husky. We found her on a drive out into the country and brought her home. She used to yodel at us, kind of a warbling howl. Anyway, we had no fencing at first and I'd put the blind dog on a leash and lead him around the yard, right around the property lines. And the female would follow along behind. About three weeks after moving here, the older dog died and I stopped with the walks. However, the female would walk the property line every day at about the same times, all the way around the acreage, marking every few yards. I've always wondered if I could purposely train a dog to respect boundaries using this method, without having fencing.
I had to buy a new tree saw, my old one just got too worn out with all the sawing I was doing. This is my favorite kind of saw, and it only cost me $20 at the hardware store. It would have cost $15 to have the old one sharpened.:
Fiskars brand 15" curved blade tree saw
I was really wearing out as I neared finishing this fence clean up. I could tell, because I kept having to take a break every 10-15 minutes. I discovered that kneeling or even sitting on the ground and scooting along and working that way took a lot less energy. The only difference was that I couldn't stack the weeds as I went along, but just threw them behind me and had to come back later and gather them in stacks. That was no trouble, though, and saved me lots of energy to do the actual chopping/sawing. After I gathered the weeds, I came back with a garden rake and pulled all the dead grass away from the fenceline and mowed down the fence on either side.
I have some more trumpet vine along the south fence that I need to prune, and then I think I'll just burn off any more of the fence that I want cleaned up. I couldn't do that with this area, as there were too many trees and vines. I've had a couple nightmares lately of long, skinny arms reaching out with short twiggy fingers pulling at my hair... memories of getting tangled in the tall, dried weeds!
When I burn off the fence, this means I'll need to wait until everything along the fence is nice and dry and also have a few buckets of water to splash on the wooden fence posts so they don't catch fire. I burnt up one of my good wooden fence posts last fall. I thought it was well protected, but I came out a couple days after burning the grass and found it smoldering!
We have cloudy skies today. But I'm pretty sure that right before the sun sets, down on the horizon, there will be a break in between the cloud cover and the earth and the sun will dazzle us just before it sets. I don't know if this happens all the time, but it happens every time I have been watching.
Blessings,
Katrinka
Here's a photo I took just a few moments ago of the sun breaking through the clouds right before it set. My camera phone doesn't do justice to the colors.
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