Making A Pasture

[Baymule]

This is about a one acre pasture in the front with road frontage. It does a fine job of growing my nemesis, green briars. We are cleaning it up to prepare for planting pasture.
Before pictures.

 

[Baymule]

This picture was taken 3-15-2015, a month after we moved in. To the left is a gatepost, there was no fence yet.

 

[Baymule]

We have ran the sheep in this pasture and they have done a good job of cleaning it up. I pulled green briars out of the trees and they ate the leaves off. There is an earthen berm that runs length-wise with trees growing out of it and LOTS of green briars, so thick that we couldn't get in there to cut them out. We raised 3 Red Wattle hogs in it this spring/summer and they did a fine job of clearing out more briars and brush. They even straddled saplings, walked them down and ate the leaves off!

So this week we have spent 2 days picking up dead tree limbs, cut some that we didn't want and hauling out the mess. We made major inroads on the green briars, still a lot to go, but WOW what a difference! Over the 3 years that we have been here, we have picked up buckets of glass shards, metal, rusted cans and all the accumulated trash of burn barrels of long ago. We thought we had done a good job of clean up, but the pigs rooted up FIVE 50 pound bags of MORE glass shards! There is a twisted pile of what used to be some sort of automobile up in there that hopefully we can drag out today. Yesterday I was finally able to get close enough to it to lay hands on it. For the longest time we could barely even see it, much less get close to it!

I'll take pics today.

 

[Mini Horses]

Some days we take a few steps back -- before trudging onward. You are really working you behinds off to salvage the land. HARD work. KUDOS.

I bet you are like I would be, almost afraid to take the tractor in.

There is no doubt in my mind you will finish this. Determination.

 

[Baymule]

DH is mowing and I am cutting more briars.

DH's war wound from yesterday, a briar raked across his eyebrow. Bandaid curtesy of 4 year old neighbor boy who brought his emergency kit.

When you drag vines out of tree tops, interesting things fall down.

More dead trees to haul out.

And our mystery automobile.

Water break over, back to work.

 

[Baymule]

15 minutes to 1:00, inside now.
This is the same skyline as the picture taken 3-15-2015. Note the gate post on the left.

Panning right... That's the garden fence on the right.

This is the same location pictured above where the sheep were enjoying themselves immensely on the green briars. This is where the ewe above was standing on a dead tree branch stretching to reach more snacks.

Panning right....

This is the fence by the road. Green briars once filled this entire area. We took down the old barbed wire fence and bush hogged with the tractor, then put up the new fence.

I walked down the road last fall with my wagon, digging Bermuda and Bahia that escaped under the fence from the wide pasture across the road. Then I sprigged it here. The pigs rooted up and ate all the Bahia rhizomes, there might be one or two very small ones left. The Bermuda enjoyed all the pigs rooting and took off. DH just mowed it. Naturally, the sheep don't want it. I'm so damned proud of this teensy patch of Bermuda and the dadburned sheep don't want it? Before it was mowed, it was almost knee deep. Oh well, I guess I'll go dig some more Bahia.

 

[CntryBoy777]

A huge difference that "Time, Energy, Labor and Animal assistance" can make....sure glad the neighbor boy was prepared....Love the bandaid....

 

[Bruce]

Wow that is a lot of work!

 

[Mike CHS]

I know how much work that is and you did a super job. I never found an automobile but one section of ours by the house had among other things, an old car gas tank still full of gas, a wrecked hot tub and a couple of hundred chairs that appear to have come out of a theater somewhere.

 

[Baymule]

Wow that is a lot of work!

Not as much as this one was. This pasture is just across the driveway.

https://www.backyardherds.com/threads/i-hate-green-briars.33715/