Brush Cutting: Explanation and Progress

Kristen was mentioning the other day that many of our friends and family members that aren't local to New England (and that's just about all of them) probably have no real idea of the reasoning behind or the extent of the brush cutting that I've been doing each year.

The house, driveway and lawn area account for less than 1/2 of our 2.6 acres. The remaining acreage is mostly woods and leach field. The entire property is surrounded by fieldstone walls that were thrown up when the property was cleared for farming 150-180 years ago. Here's a link to a post that I made in 2015 about our Plot Lines.

The leach field was put in place when the house was restored in 2006. It's maybe 1/2 acre and is essentially a very large mound of sand that was trucked in for the purpose. People plant lawns over their leach fields but, from what we've read, it would be a bad idea to let trees or larger plants take over the leach field.

The primary plant on our leach field has been a native New England bamboo. It is dense and can easily grow 6-8 feet in a month. It disappears with the first frost but comes back with a vengeance in the Spring. From what I've read, as long as it has leaves, it stores energy in its root. Cut it off and it has to use that stored energy to regrow. Keep it cut off and it will eventually use up its supply of stored energy and die.

This summer, I have kept the bamboo cut off at ground level. It has needed cutting less and less often so I'm pretty sure that it's working. We'll have our first freeze this week so I guess we'll see what happens in the Spring. I'll get after any that shows up at first sprout.

We don't seem to have bamboo anyplace else on the property. What we do have is multiflora rose, poison ivy and tree strangling bittersweet vines.

The multiflora rose is an Asian plant that some idiot thought would make excellent fencing to keep cattle in (or out). It gets huge and it's large thorny branches wrap themselves around everything in reach. Multiflora likes sun to it grows on the edge of the woods and climbs trees to get closer to the sun.

Poison ivy seems to prefer the shade. There seems to be 2 varieties. One variety covers the forest floor line a ground cover. The other variety grows like a vine and climbs trees.

The multiflora and poison ivy are the nastiest to get rid of but their climbing vines don't seem to be particularly threatening to the trees. The bittersweet vines are another case. Bittersweet can be 2" in diameter and they can choke the life right out of the trees. They are very leafy and they can completely cover a tree. We've had cases where we didn't realize that a tree was dead until we killed the bittersweet vines (by severing their connections to the ground).

When we first moved in, the brush had encroached to the point where it was overhanging the edges of the lawn. The multiflora thorns frequently made mowing a painful experience.

These lilac bushes were tangled up in multiflora vines. The closest lilac and row of forsythia bushes were planted later.

We had no idea that these rocks were even there.

Looking across the back of the lawn toward the leach field.

Looking from the back corner of the lawn toward Coldbrook Rd. The non-lawn area here was completely overgrown with multiflora.

That same stretch of lawn looking back from the Coldbrook Rd. end.

 Part of my clearing operation has been cleaning up under the trees on Coldbrook Rd.

Cleaned woods to the left of the lawn. Our property line hits Coldbrook Rd. at the storm drain which is just to the left of the concrete post.

At the other side of the driveway, I've cleaned under the woods to the corner with Barre Rd.

There's a a lot of clearing still to be done once you round the corner.

There's a stone wall along Barre Rd. that was so overgrown that it was invisible and inaccessible from both sides. After the town came by this summer and mowed down the big stuff, I sprayed the entire Barre side of the wall with brush killer. It's still a work in progress but I've been working on cutting the now-dead brush.

From Barre Rd., looking down the wall that marks the back edge of our property.

From that same point, looking down the Barre Rd. property line / wall. That building down at the corner is Rose Cottage, the oldest surviving house it Oakham (1790's I think). It's been empty for years but our friend Brian just bought it and is in the process of restoring it.

Closer to the corner.

 Now let's look at that wall from the inside.

Looking across the leach field toward the point where the back wall meets the Barre Rd. wall (back wall is across the top and a little of the Barre Rd. wall is visible on the right). I have never been able  to clear all the way to the wall because, at some point long ago, the property was fenced in for goats. The overgrown wire fencing was several inside the stone wall and nearly invisible inside the tangle of brush (deadly for chainsaw and brush cutter blades). My project this year has been to remove the fencing and posts so that I could clear brush all the way to the wall. So far, I've removed the fencing all the way up Barre Rd. and maybe a third of the way across the back.

Closer look at that same corner. A couple of my burn piles are in the shot (I'll be able to burn from Jan 15 through May 1).

Rose Cottage through the trees. There's still a lot of clearing to do in this area.

Looking further along the back wall. 

This patch will definitely get my attention this year. I learned a long time ago that, since the multiflora vines grow toward the light, it's much easier to approach and cut the trunks from the woods side. The last couple of pictures have been the woods area that I've cleaned up as I approach this final tier of multiflora.

Back wall straight back from the house. Just to the left of this, the wall turns uphill before continuing farther to the left. It then turns left again and becomes our common border with all of the houses on Maple St. An old hand-dug stone well is up at that highest corner but it may take a couple of more years before that can be easily accessed.

This area is scary. It's back behind the huge log that was in some of the earlier pictures. The multiflora will have to be cut out first but most of the trees are being choked out by bitterroot. We had a tree blow over back here recently. It hung up midair on a smaller tree so I cut the smaller tree to eliminate the hazard. With the smaller tree cut, neither tree budged. Both were suspended by vines from a third tree. Quite a crash when I cut that one.

This is near the back corner of the lawn. The end of the huge log is behind this bunch of multiflora. This is pretty much the same bitterroot section of woods that was in the last shot. The red dots mark treed that are dead and need to be cut.

I've been inching my way toward the backs of the Maple St. properties each year. This clump of multiflora in the front is the last bit that I'll need to do in this area...

...Then it's like this all the way back to the well. This kind of area just needs some thinning out.

The house from the back wall / Barre Rd. corner.

-JC-

Close Encounter with a Porcupine

We've never seen a porcupine in the daytime. They spend most of their lives in trees and our sightings have been pretty much limited to late night wildlife camera clips and roadkill (they are slow, dumb and don't reflect headlights).

I previously mentioned the trees that came down on the power lines. In surveying our property, we found that we had some downed trees as well. Two previously identified widow makers (semi-fallen trees that are hung up on other trees) are now down on the ground. If there had been a safe way to drop them before, I would have done it. The storm left us with two new widow makers, both of which seemed addressable.

My attempts to dislodge one failed. It's caught on a limb that it too high to cut off and I was unable to pull it off with a rope. It will require some further thought.

The second was on top of a small tree. It seemed like I could cut the small tree and bring it down. When I cut it, I discovered that vines had both trees entwined with a third. I cut the third and brought all three crashing down. They've now been added to one of my burn piles.

Back to the porcupine … we think that it might have lost it's home when the trees came down. It's also possible that the recent storm left it without a home.

We came face to face on the driveway when I was going to the mailbox. It didn't seem to notice me until I'd gone back to the house to knock on the window and get Kristen's attention. It headed across the lawn while I started taking pictures. It seemed so slow and fearless that I decided to go closer and get these pictures.

It seemed to be in a slow speed charge at this point so I retreated and gave it some space.

-JC-

Bomb Cyclone

I'm not quite sure of what exactly a bomb cyclone is but it has something to do with a sudden extreme drop in barometric pressure bringing high winds and heavy rain. Boston had it's worst bomb cyclone ever last night. It wasn't quite as bad here but we still had 60-70 MPH winds and about 2 1/2 inches of rain,

We had a very brief power outage in the middle of the night. It wasn't enough to require the resetting of clocks but it was enough to turn the light on in our china cabinet (an idiosyncrasy of our china cabinet is that the light goes on during even the briefest of outages).

Our internet was out when I woke up this morning and, while I was attempting to reset it, The power failed. We reported the outage to National Grid and immediately switched over to our generator. We still had no internet.

During the first 1/4 mile of our morning walk, we spotted 3 trees that had broken off and were hanging on the lines. We reported the locations to National Grid and, when I subsequently went out to take pictures, I found 2 more.

Nice finger.

We took a look at National Grid's outage map and learned that they were expecting to restore service by 11pm Saturday (2 days from now). Then the power (and internet) came back on at about 5:30m. All of the trees were still on the lines so that was a bit worrisome. No sooner was it back on and we had National Grid and their tree trimming service in our driveway. We directed them to the downed trees.

Our power restoration lasted about an hour. We are now back on generator but at least the internet is working.

Update:

Our internet failed again right after the last save. Power and internet came back on at about 3am. When we went out for our morning walk, the trees were still hanging on the lines. The tree trimmers showed up while we were passing and we watched them do their job for a bit. As we continued our walk, we noticed that many of the houses in our area still seemed to be without power (everything seems to be back to normal now - Saturday @ 4:30pm).

Other than the power/internet loss, we came through relatively unscathed. The leaves dropped all at once and we had to clear them away to find the downed branches on the lawn (nothing too large). Everything is cleaned up now.

-JC-

Peak Foliage and Oaktoberfest Burnout

The leaf peepers have been blocking the roads for a couple weeks now trying to catch the foliage colors at their peak. We've been trying to stay home on the weekends so we don't have to deal with them. This weekend is supposed to be the peak so I took some pictures on our morning walk.

Yesterday was Oakham's Oaktoberfest. When we moved to Oakham, we were told that Oaktoberfests were held every other year and that, in the alternate years, there would be a Summerfest. So far, we've seen an Oaktoberfest in 2015, a Summerfest in 2016, nothing in 2017 and then Oaktoberfests in 2018 and 2019.

These events have all been unique. There doesn't seem to be any set format for the events. Past Octoberfests featured a ball roll (to benefit the library), carnival games and a bon fire. Those things didn't happen this year (the library had a different fundraiser this year). This Octoberfest featured 3 bands, a beer garden, food trucks and vendors.

The main event was a burnout (which used to be part of the Summerfest. The burnout is a crazy event. Entrants modify their high powered cars and trucks so that they can lock their front brakes and stay in place while they spin their back tires. The vehicles spin in place for 30 seconds and try to make as much smoke as possible. The stench and amount of rubber that they scrape up afterwards is amazing.

I didn't take pictures but I did manage to find some that were taken from a drone. We were all at the back of the group that is at the left of the utility pole.

I don't know who won but this was my personal favorite.

A video of my personal favorite:
Sorry, this link brings up all of the drone pictures. Still trying to link to just one. The black truck with all of the black diesel exhaust was my favorite.

Smoke over the athletic field (site of the Oaktoberfest).

One last video that Briar took.

-JC-