Sunday, October 27, 2019

Brush Grubber broke

Pulled, cut, chipped more underbrush, but then the brush grubber broke and we couldn't pull up any more yaupon.  Dang.

I got one stump up before the grubber broke.  I was very pleased with the stump I pulled, just wish I could have pulled more.  For perspective, the bar on the chain saw is 18".



As you can see from the photo, I cut the yaupon about two and a half to three feet up.  I wanted to leave a nice bit of trunk to use for pulling up the stumps.  I guess it will have to wait until.  Dang.
The part that came off the grubber is a spring that holds the jaws tight on the tree trunk.  You can see on the picture, I've drawn in where the spring goes.  Unfortunately, the manufacturer is out of the spring.  It's on a two week back ordered.  Yep, I ordered two.  I don't want to be caught short, again!  Dang!

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Clearing Yaupon and making wood chips

We continued to clear underbrush.  We found a small pine stand as we worked in from the road.  It was satisfying to see the pines as we cleared out the sweetgum and yaupon holly.  This is a continuation of the area near our long suffering blackberry.

Here's a couple of pics of Brenda feeding the beast.  She's turning those pesky trees into wood chips.

 The wood chipper is great, but it is still a lot of work.  There is a hydraulic feed roller, but it sometimes has a hard time taking in crooked branches.  We have to help it along by pushing, rearranging and sometimes looping off branches.  It's a bit more work than burning, but we both feel much better with chipping the brush.

Here we've spread the wood chips over a bare section of one of our woods roads.  The bare dirt is not good for the environment and this  road was starting to show signs of erosion.  By covering it with wood chips it should help stop the erosion and hopefully start to build back the soil that has already been lost.
We cleared out a lot of brush and we've freed up the young pines.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Trying to save the blackberry

This little guy is a thornless blackberry.  I planted it several years ago.  It has struggled and I don't think it has ever produced a berry.  My wife and I were planning on clearing brush and thinning a small pine stand near where we worked a couple of weeks ago, but as I passed this miserable little guy, I thought, it's time to clear the brush around the blackberry and see if it will do better.  As you can see from this closeup, this is an after the brush has been cleared picture.