Brush Clearing Program
Since my mother's death, my 92-year-old father Erwin Thompson has had on clearing brush on the 100-acre place, Evergreen Heights, in a major way. This project is usually to completing several new novels, calling square-dances, and hosting an every week musical open house.
slope mowers
Since i have grew up in the era of the Jane Fonda workout, a breakthrough for mature women, I have been previously teasing my father that his brush-clearing project is his exercise program. Unfortunately, his workout probably doesn't need the same commercial potential as Jane's because not really that many folks have a 100-acre parcel to workout on.
Still, the foundations behind what he's doing and why he's doing the work, and the enormous benefits we've seen in his health during the last year hold promise. His heart, lungs, voice, outlook, and sleep supply improved since he's been dedicating himself towards the Brush-Clearing Workout Program.
Janet: Pop, just how long have you been clearing brush?
Erwin: Because i was big enough to support an axe I reckon that.
Janet: What was it that called for your requirements to begin clearing brush from the wide-scale way you have been within the last year or so?
brush clearing
Erwin: I got tired of it reaching out to swipe us off of the tractor as we mowed area of.
Janet: You also a memory of what the place looked like when you were a boy, along with a vision of what you hoped it will look like again should you applied yourself with concerted effort.
Erwin: Yes. It's going to never look like it did after i was a boy.
My Grandfather Riehl had three steady hired men. The tillable soil was all tilled. The rougher ground was planted in chestnut trees that have been grafted varieties that my grandfather had produced; first by cross pollination after which by grafting the wood with the promising seedlings onto other unproved seedlings. These he'd planted on the hills which were too steep and rough to farm. To help keep the weeds down he pastured sheep for this area.
Janet: Tell us why the brush perhaps there is is the first place. Since you are the professor of brush-ology, give to us the basics.
Erwin:There are two types of land classification, and after that of course all of the shades between. The residents in the good, flat, all-tillable lands in central Illinois are living in The Prairie The other end from the scale is The Forest.
The people on The Prairie do not have a brush problem. They farm as well as the fence rows and in many cases there are no fences.There isn't any ready source of seeds for your brush growth, because farmers are almost within a world by themselves.
Ideally, what you look for in The Forest is okay, big trees. These big trees discourage the growth of brush by their tall shaded environment which has a thick mat of pine needles accrued from the passing years. This discourages the increase of brush.
Between these base points, there is what is called The Edge. This is how we are. The seeds in the brush are carried with the birds, the wind, the rains which wash the seeds on down the hills and down the banks of the streams.
The railroads used to clean out their box cars and tennis ball so the leavings along the right of way to avoid it here in the country where they figured nobody would even notice. We did. That is certainly how wild oats got into our part of the country. This is an ornery weed that is totally worthless and intensely persistent in re-seeding itself.
The actions that is really bad in regards to the brush along the side of the fields is that the trees reach out for the light of the field, and also be in that direction. Often they are so low that they hit the operator when mowing the field unless they just layout another ten feet, this also of course takes much away from the open ground and adds to the underbrush.
Janet: How do you cut brush?
Erwin: In older times there was clearly just one way, knowning that was a good sharp axe. Today, to a minimum of partially offset a few of the disadvantages that we have inherited of what some people call "progress," we now have the chain saw. I additionally use the pruning shears that my sister and uncle utilized in their grafting work. Between both of these great tools I'm able to handle anything that has appeared looking at me so far.
The key trouble comes if the vines wrap around the larger trees. Sometimes the tops become so inter-twined that the tree will not fall even though it is cut.
Two possible solutions together with just leaving it hang and hope it will fall some day. Sometimes about the smaller ones I make a cut about four feet higher than the ground level, and this will drop the tree trunk four feet nearer the soil. Sometimes it works.The safer strategy is to hook the tractor onto the mess and keep pulling until it comes apart.
So we contain the brush on the ground. I have a big flat bed trailer in my tractor. We load the comb on the trailer and take it to a burning pile. It takes work. I have a neighbor that is built like Paul Bunyan's ox. I phone him constantly my "pet elephant." I've another neighbor who lives near the burning pile. He keeps it burned.
Which is how I do it. I suggest brush clearing for health insurance mental health. There's a firm satisfaction in seeing the erstwhile messy fringe of the field become yet again looking like a field.