CM, it was last Friday - we actually got a sleet storm here in good New England. This is also the North side of a large hill, so there's still snow here when most of the town is melted off.
I moved away from the immediate idea of clearing out some of the woods, to cultivating some of the area around the perimiter of the front yard. 1. some clearing on side of property ( photo / image / picture from film495's Garden ) 2. still pretty thick with crowded canopy. this is the left front of the yard. ( photo / image / picture from film495's Garden ) 3. Arial of house and front yard. it is mostly wooded around the perimeter, where I put a black line, and the yellow is where I'm thinking of beating back some more of the overgrowth to plant fruit trees, bushes, garden edibles. ( photo / image / picture from film495's Garden )
anything a couple inches thick will get cut up and eventually used in a wood stove. the brush will likely get put out back (there's a couple acre wood lot behind the house) I'll make some brush piles, either for wildlife, or eventually to burn in an outdoor firepit.
That is a lot of work. Glad to see that your idea is evolving. It is certainly a beautiful wooded area. We made fire wood and path edging (bed borders) with some of the branches from trees we removed. That really helped me to define the beds initially before the plants started giving a better idea of where the beds laid. Keep us posted. Can't wait to see what you do.
Lots of work indeed. And I'd go ahead and clear that extra space now. It would be harder to do later on.
I had never cut down any trees before. It is not too hard, but can be tricky if there isn't a good place to fell it. I had a few get hung up, and had to pull them out with a rope, fun. You're absolutely right, if I'm going to cut anything out of there - it has to happen before I plant bushes or fruit trees, so lots of planning and work still to do. It is a funny process as I go along, I was hesitant to cut any trees at first, if I didn't have a good reason, I'd leave it. Now, I want the sunlight and space for gardening, and the reality is, just about any tree I cut down, has another tree right behind it that is a nice tree, so I just need to get my wife on board so I can clear more of the edges out. This is a good bit of work, but certainly far less that opening up a space in the wood lot as I had originally considered. I'm trying to do it in stages, focus on what I can clear for now. Then I hope to evaluate how much space there is, probably more than I'll know what to do with honestly. Then on to figuring out how to make the areas workable for growing. Then figuring out what can grow well in those areas. I may just grow in containers to see what works, before I get into major work tilling anything up. Sometimes less is more.
When I picked out a spot of land that was going to be "my area", I honestly thought I claimed plenty of space. I've been extending and expanding ever since!
