Thistleblooms Rambles

[Bruce]

I was going to suggest vacuuming instead of blowing the needles until you got to "long Ponderosa Pine". I have no doubt they'd clog the hose in no time.

 

[thistlebloom]

What kind of pines do you have that the needles stick to your walls? Must be something pretty small. My favorite pine needles of those I am around are White Pine. They're so soft and not pokey at all.
I think I'm veering into weirdness now, telling you all about my favorite pine needles.

 

[thistlebloom]

I was going to suggest vacuuming instead of blowing the needles until you got to "long Ponderosa Pine". I have no doubt they'd clog the hose in no time.

I can just picture it....walking out the door with the old Dirt Devil vacuum...
DH-what are you up to?
Me- Oh, just doin' a little yard work hon.

 

[Baymule]

We have pine needles here too. They carpet the ground under the big trees. No grass grows there, it gets smothered out. The back half of our 2 1/2 acre so called horse pasture that isn't a pasture (yet) is pine trees. I would love to thin them out and leave only the big trees, but we are back to BJ saving every tree. Pine beetles are making the decisions for him, we have two more dead pines by the horse barn that have to come down soon, one of them is a big one.

 

[thistlebloom]

We have a lot of beetle killed trees also. My husband was a big tree saver when we bought this place.You have that tendency when you come from a dry deserty climate where trees are a boon. But ours are dog hair thick, and it's not usable land or healthy for the trees either.
Our old house fell out of escrow and he had to go back down to take care of it until it sold. The dust hadn't settled in the driveway when I gathered up my chainsaw and my two bondservants (Kid#1 and #2) and started thinning like a mad woman.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Miss @thistlebloom,

I hope you take pictures as you thin out the trees. We have the same problem on our farm, and have been thinning them out around our place. Do you remove the cut trees from the woods? If so, what do you use to remove them? So far, we have been thinning along the edges of the trees, so getting them out hasn't been hard, as I can pick them up with the grapple on the tractor. But as we start to go deeper, I am considering buying a winch to pull them out.

Yesterday I thought of you (along with Mr. @MtViking, Mr. @Bruce, Miss @rachels.haven, and others) while I was watching several videos of snow removal. The one put out by GP Outdoors, who resides in central Ontario, shows him using 2 different snow removal tools. Do you have something like these to help?

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[Xerocles]

I think I'm veering into weirdness now, telling you all about my favorite pine needles.

Are we talking "pine porn" here?
In S.C., we don't mind the needles so much. They make pretty good decorative mulch as "nests" around trees and shrub beds. But the POLLEN! If Dorothy tried to "follow the yellow brick road" around here in April she'd be totally confused because they're ALL yellow. Yes, the north has snow shovels, we have pollen shovels.

 

[thistlebloom]

@Senile_Texas_Aggie , the bulk of our thinning took place in the earlier years here, and we have about 5 acres in back that need it desperately, but will realistically have to be done by somebody with equipment to handle it. We have done it all by hand so far, cut a tree down, limb it and haul it out by hand or quad. Sometimes my husband has been able to get the Jeep in close enough to drag the bigger stuff out. Once in awhile we use my little Farmall Cub, but she smokes a lot and needs a rebuild, so I hate to overwork her. Fortunately we haven't had to deal with any real large trees this way. We have concentrated on the smaller, 20' to 30' foot ones. They are skinny since they grow so close together. But it is for sure a labor intensive way to do it, and we're not spring chickens anymore.

Last spring our awesome neighbor took out a lot of trees for us to open up space for a 60' round pen for working the horses.
My husband and I were thrilled and completely amazed at what he accomplished in a few hours that would have taken us months to do by hand.
He used an implement (I don't know what it's called, I'm sure you do) that grabs the trunk and lifts it out of the ground. It was a thing of beauty! We didn't have to deal with stumps. Then he gave the area a rough grading, taking out all the buck brush and willow shrubs. I'll see if I can find a picture...

As far as snow removal we use a snowblower and the quad with a snow blade. Sure would be handy to have a tractor, but right now we're content to pay our neighbor for the heavy work that he helps us with.

 

[thistlebloom]

Are we talking "pine porn" here?
In S.C., we don't mind the needles so much. They make pretty good decorative mulch as "nests" around trees and shrub beds. But the POLLEN! If Dorothy tried to "follow the yellow brick road" around here in April she'd be totally confused because they're ALL yellow. Yes, the north has snow shovels, we have pollen shovels.

We don't have many hardwoods here, it's almost completely pine country, so I know what you mean about the pine pollen. Yellow clouds of it every spring, and yellow vehicles, yellow dust on the furniture etc!

 

[Bruce]

But as we start to go deeper, I am considering buying a winch to pull them out.

Good plan. I am assuming you are talking about a winch like people mount on vehicles vs a much more expensive logging winch? Where do you plan to attach it to the tractor?

He used an implement (I don't know what it's called, I'm sure you do) that grabs the trunk and lifts it out of the ground.

Looks like @Senile_Texas_Aggie's "Stump bucket" though it doesn't grab the trees so maybe it is something that just looks similar.