Senile Texas Aggie - comic relief for the rest of you

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Miss @farmerjan,

That's a great idea! I'll look into that and see what I find out.

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[Ridgetop]

Goats forage the brush rather than grass, cows eat taller grass, sheep eat the grass to the ground, hogs root out stuff. They all have a role to play in clearing ground. You can eat them all when they are done with their work. But first you need fencing. Electric fencing can be tricky with tall grass and brush grounding it out so you will need to do your homework. Greybeard probably can help you there.

Some people rent out goats and sheep to clear ground, but some of the rent to clear people require fencing since they don't stay with the herd, just turn them in with dogs to protect them.

Read about the Canadian government forestry clearance program where they hire people with large flocks to travel through the forests clearing out the understory to prevent catastrophic forest fires. One of the original flock persons to do this has written some good articles about his LGDs and how they work under those conditions. Incredibly interesting!

 

[Mike CHS]

The city of Nashville has a contract with a Katahdin sheep farm to gang graze 150+ sheep on a riverbank that was almost impassable. It didn't take long till all of the vegetation was gone.

 

[farmerjan]

Did a quick search on the internet and there are several "brush clearing" goat services. Don't know your area, but the "greedy goats" have several references and the U of Arkansas also has some info. Hopefully you can find something that would help you out, and not have you tied down to animals that you aren't familiar with and have never handled before. As @Mike CHS stated, there are places that do contracts for that. Maybe too expensive, but you never know until you do some checking....

 

[Bruce]

If you are doing movable fence you can mow a strip with the brush hog first then put in the fence.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Thanks, everyone, for all of the suggestions! I will first check with the local county agent and see what he recommends.

 

[greybeard]

And it may be that your close proximity to the field trial area (dogs) will help keep predators away from your own property.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

All,

Part 1: Bentonite
Mr @greybeard, sir, earlier on my journal you mentioned using Bentonite to seal a pond. Can that be used in an existing pond without draining it?

Part 2: markers
I will be referencing the following map in the text that follows:


I decided to try to locate the different markers (survey stakes) that mark the boundaries of our property. The corner of our property closest to our house (point A) was marked by orange tape on the bushes next to the pasture. But when the power line company cleared out the limbs and brush earlier last week they cut down all of the bushes with the orange tape. So I went and looked for a marker that I could see where they cleared the bushes and trees. I could not find anything. I decided to order a metal detector to help me find the marker. Once it came in yesterday, I went to about where the orange tape was, guided by my phone app HuntStand. After a few false positives (at least I didn't find anything an inch or two below the soil surface), I finally found a rusted orange T-post, so I placed another new T-post where the tip looked like it broke off:


But I am wondering whether or not there should be a rebar driven into the ground marking the actual survey boundary, and not a simple T-post. That seems to be a bit "Aggie-engineered". I would have thought something more permanent would have been used.

While I was at it, I decided to see if I could locate the western boundaries of the property (points B & C). I asked myself, "Should I walk all the way over there, carrying two T-posts and the driver, as well as a can of paint, or can I get there in the Gator side-by-side?" I decided to dare using the Gator. So I plunged into the woods, running over small (and not so small) trees and bushes. The woods look like they are not that old, as there are quite a few smaller trees in there. It proved to be an ordeal. While I was on my way to point B, I found a deer stand at point D, which had an old game camera there. I claimed it (it's on my property, after all), but I don't yet know if it works. Finally I got to point B. It was marked. Then I headed south to find point C. I found it as well. Then I started back more or less toward the house. (It turned out I was headed a bit more south than I realized.) I ran into a lane through the woods made for a side-by-side or maybe a truck (path E). My HuntStand app showed me that I was on our property, but the lane headed almost due south, up the ridge. I followed the trail until I reached the top of the ridge. The HuntStand app showed me I was well on our neighbors' property. So I guess that the neighbor and the previous owner who built our house had an agreement to hunt together. I went back down the path to its end, then headed back to the house. The poor Gator took a bit of a beating -- I managed to tear loose the left front fender from the floorboard! But I fixed that this morning.

Today my wife and I decided to try to find the property boundary marker at point F. After telling me of my adventures yesterday, she wanted to go with me this time. So we looked for the marker at point F. But this trip this morning for us was worse than yesterday's trip was for me. The land starts to rise up a ridge the farther south you go, and the land starts getting steeper. Pretty soon we were just creeping along. Keep in mind that we sometimes have to run over trees, and that means sometime getting a running start. So it was very slow going, and finally I decided that we should turn around. That's when the REAL fun began! First, I discovered that we had lost the T-posts! Because the hill was so steep, the posts were actually lower at the back of the Gator (on top of the tail gate) than they were at the front of the Gator (at the bottom of the bed). With all of the bouncing over logs and trees, they slid out somewhere.

At this point my wife decided to get out and go look for the posts while I turned around.

Then when I tried to turn around, I was in for another surprise. For you see, a Gator doesn't want to track on a steep slope where you have it pointed. Instead, due to the wet ground and the steepness, it tends to slide down the hill as you are driving along. So when I would aim between two trees I would often slide down so that the lower tree was now in the way. But finally, after about an hour, I was able to turn around. While I was turning around, my wife had found the T-posts and also found the marker that we were looking for. (We had missed it to the west as we went up the hill.) She didn't take any pictures -- in fact, dummy me forgot to take any pictures either yesterday or today -- but she said that the marker was easily visible. We and the Gator made it out alive again. But I don't think I want to chance driving on a steep hill in the woods any more!

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[RollingAcres]

Sounds like quite an adventure for you and your beautiful gal. Glad no one was hurt and glad that the Gator was not stuck.

 

[greybeard]

Part 1: Bentonite
Mr @greybeard, sir, earlier on my journal you mentioned using Bentonite to seal a pond. Can that be used in an existing pond without draining it?

Depends what's on the pond bottom, size of the pond and how bad and where the leak(s) is (are).
Most of the time, the leak is a seep where the original ground meets the soil dam that was placed on the existing soil. Fairly easy to take a little rowboat with sacks of sodium bentonite and go along about 2-4 ft from the dam's edge and sprinkle the bentonite granules into the water. It will sink, the granules hydrate out and should get drawn into the porous areas.

If the bottom of the pond is covered in vegetation, that can cause a problem if you are trying to seal the entire bottom area. The granules never make it down to make contact with the bottom.

There are also companies that will 'shoot' the bentonite granules out all over the pond using a moderate pressure/high volume water cannon type thing with a hopper into which the bentonite is fed into the water stream just before the nozzle. My b-i-l had his pond sealed like this both with bentonite and then only a few months ago, fertilized. The bentonite application was expensive... he said if he had it to do over again, he wouldn't, and he's usually pretty loose with his wallet.

Bentonite is HEAVY per volume.
A 1/10 inch layer of Bentonite 1 sq ft in area will weigh nearly a lb. A cu yd weighs nearly 1 ton.

If the pond is small, I suggest you drain it and apply it by a different method.
You county agent person can tell you what's available in your area.