Clearing a piece of overgrown pond shore

I would have loved to have spent a day on the tractor, but the job at hand took priority. A skid steer with a mulching head would have been the perfect tool if I had the cash. Free manual labor had to do this time. The original pond must have been rectangular with a dam around all 4 sides. On the north side, it is mostly removed with a big peninsula on the west as pictured below and a smaller one on the east. The smaller one would make a nice secluded campsite. We need room for a tent pad, fire ring, and sitting area. It is relatively flat and overgrown with small trees and lots of thorny vines. You can see how dense it is on the edges of the photo. The brush saw would not stay running for long, but once I started taking the chainsaw to things I realized most was to large for my brush saw anyways. I had about 3 1/2 hours to do some clearing after a quick walk around the place to check everything. One more day should do it on the clearing and then I can take a sharp mattock to any offending stubs and mow the vines. We had a delimna deciding what to do with the brush: burn or chip. Burning is easy and can help clear those vines when done right on top of the clearing. Chipping gives us mulch we can use on paths and the tent camping site. Once all of the cutting is finished, we are going to rent a chipper and make mulch. We might as well make sure there is a full days chipping if we have to rent one for a day. I plan on cutting the larger trunks into firewood for use at home and here. I have a few other topics of interest that warrant a seperate post that I will post in the next few days. They will be about beaver that is still there and starting an orchard in some clear areas at the north end of the property.

The reason for the tractor

Here is part of my reasoning behind finally purchasing some form of tractor. The picture shows a peninsula that semi-seperates the main rectangular pond from the northern shallow pond. It is at a strange angle, overgrown, and generally unusable. I believe it is from excavating the pond and allowed the excavator to reach further portions of the pond during renovations in the past. it is shaped sort of like an inverted V with the north side steep and the south side sloping gently towards the water. I want to shape it with a flattened top, leaving the steep north side, and creating a possible building site or at least a packed gravel pad for my wife to enjoy the pond. A small cabin would have a great view from here of both parts of the pond. I cleared the brush over a year ago with a brush cutter, but the vines and a few trees are coming back from the roots. I am heading out to mow the year old shrubbery before they grow enough next year to require a rotary cutter. A middle buster/sub soiler combo at TSC will be picked up soon for busting up that grass and other gardening uses, maybe while I am out mowing. I will then go over it with a box blade and level it off. The next post should be of my mowing results and maybe a little logging/sawmill action if time allows.

Suffering as a home body

I never realized how much I enjoyed the outdoors until circumstances forced me to stay at home. First, our beautiful little girl was born last August, and took up a lot of my time. My wife then developed some medical problems forcing me to stay around the house. Hopefully the end is in sight with a surgery and 6 weeks of recovery. I am amazed at the number of crazy ideas I have come up with during my time at home. Outbuildings, cabins, docks for the pond, all growing in size and complexity as time passed. Harvesting and management plans filled my mind with dreams of getting out to the property more often. Last week I settled down and determined what it would take to spend more time out there. Shelter of some sort would definitely help by letting me take the wife and kid with me, but the budget is tight. I took all those interesting ideas and drawings and filed them in a drawer. They were to large for the budget or to complex for the amount of time I have at the property. As I was strolling through the grocery store, a Mother Earth News DIY quarterly caught my eye. It contained an article called called "Build this Cozy Cabin" which can also be found on their website. Simple, inexpensive, and some of the larger timbers could be made on the sawmill out of post oak to save more money. The loft gives me a nice place for my daughter to sleep when she gets older and needs more space. It can also be found online here: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/2006-06-01/Build-this-Cozy-Cabin.aspx . Now I have something to plan and budget for that will let us all enjoy the woods! I made time a few weeks back to plant some cottonwood cuttings that were given to me by a fellow ForestryForum.com member Brian Beauchamp, but that is post for another time, with pics!