#bushhog

Strange as it may seem, bushhogging gives me both a sense of Zen and a feeling of accomplishment. It took me years to reach that point, and I was happy to relive it again last week. As a bonus, I had an ongoing interaction with a persistent crow, who turned out to be pretty smart.  Continue reading Bushhogging

Cleaning Up The Apple Orchard

What a mess!! The blackberry vines have taken over our apple orchard at the house the last two years. It was actually hard to get to the apple trees to pick the fruit!  This picture was taken last fall after Eddie had mowed off enough to allow us to walk through the orchard.

Three years ago we had a bumper crop of blackberries all over the farm.  I froze more berries that year and made more juice…

  View of the mountain from our front porch before the cleanup..

A “before and after” view of our mountain is such a huge change and it  took several hours and days to complete.  Our mountain view has disappeared over the last few years due to barberry, alm olive and other obnoxious shrubs.  We contacted Aaron Calfee from Paint Bank to do the work for us.  He has a bushhog that fits the front of…