I finally took the time to address the fallen trees behind the chicken yard fence at the northeast corner. These trees had been down for some time and should've been taken care of during the winter when weeds and ground brush were at a minimum but other obligation kept me from getting back there until now. Either way, this trash needed to be cleaned up so the area around the back of the fence can be accessible once again. I had already started with the weed trimming of the ground all the way up to the fallen trees on either side. I still had to use the hedge trimmer to cut the smaller pieces of branches around the trees that were low enough to access, as well as clear the branches enough to allow me to get in close to use the chainsaw to cut the larger stuff up.
After getting a good cutting of branches and other trash around the tree trunks, I was able to get to work on the two immediate trunks on the ground. I started off with cutting the bark sections with the poison ivy vines into smaller sections I was able to move safely over to the burn pile. Of course its not good to burn PI, but from a distance one can do so without breathing in the vapors. Once the PI covered bark was cut free and thrown on the burn pile I commenced to cutting the two trunk sections into smaller logs so I can split that wood later for stacking on the firewood pile. Since this wood was still pretty solid, I felt it was worth trying to save this stuff versus tossing it on the burn pile. With the first set of trunk pieces cut up and moved over to the log splitter, I did a little more trimming to rid the area of more smaller trash, then cut the next section of trunk, which was right alongside the fence. As before, I had to cut the PI covered bark from the section of trunks and cut the trunks into smaller pieces to stack by the splitter. Once that section was done, I cut the bark on the last couple sections of tree trunk that was facing the fence. I cut these trunk sections into more small logs, further building up the stack of logs by the log splitter. I'll have a good amount of wood to stack by the firewood pile when this stuff is processed, which in addition to the Fallen Trees on the other end of the yard will further add to our wood reserves. The trimming of the brush around the tree trunks and the other tree sections that had to be brought down as a result of the fallen trees left a bed of mulch mixed with poison ivy and other miscellaneous brush. There's still some tree stuff that I can cut back some more to further clear the area around the path alongside the fence but for the time being I have the path pretty cleared, at least to about where it was before. With the burn pile stacked up pretty good with the trash that was cut from all this fallen tree trash, I was ready to fire the pile. I had some other miscellaneous garbage to add to the pile to further help burn down all the brush, as well as dispose of other useless crap. Using old gas/oil mixture, I was able to get the pile going pretty good and inside of an hour, the pile was reduced to ashes and smaller pieces of trash that I'll have to stack in closer to start up on a new burn pile later on for another burn. I'll probably add to this new burn pile with more stuff I cut from this same area. One of the goals this year is to cut away enough areas around the outside of the fences to make it cleaner, getting rid of a lot of the dead fall and smaller weed trees that make the woods more cluttered. As time progresses, more trees will shed sections during storms, hopefully not damaging anything in or around the compound. The more of the surrounding woods gets cleaned up, the better the overall health of the woods will be. Of course this will mean a lot more burn piles as I move material from the woods to the burn area. This also holds itself as a bit of a safety precaution against runaway wildfire when this ground brush is cleared away. The trees themselves may take a little effort to catch but if there isn't a huge bed of burnable trash on the ground, it will take much more to catch the high branches of the trees. Besides, it just looks a lot better.
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