I had originally thought it would be a good day to work on Anton's desk, his request for his birthday from Karl and I. Anton asked for the wood to build a desk for his room, something we have been working on as time permits. I will go into it in greater detail once it is completed. Karl thought it would be a good day to finally "play" with his new outside power tools. What started as just wanting to try them out, a new gas powered weed/brush whacker and a chain saw, turned into our work for the day.
He initially started trimming the grass around the house, and moved over to the oak near the back of the house. This area is impossible to get with the mower due to uneven ground and a couple of sharp drops. As I saw the progression, I knew I needed to suit up for the obvious brewing battle, the tree line. On came the hat, leather gloves, old sweatshirt (it reached a chilling high of 58), and work boots with two sizes of clippers in hand. "Here we go", I said to myself. We began whacking and pulling the grape vines and wild brambles about a quarter in of the left hand side of the tree line. This is the location of where the tree had snapped, already vines had begun to grow over top of the broken tree that lay upside down on the ground. After about 4 hours we had accumulated a nice dent in the over growth.
We had created a nice size pile. Now what do we do with this woody vine and deadwood? In the country, we burn it! Karl looked at me like I was a crazy woman when I told him we needed to move the pile further towards the house away from the tree line. I was very fearful of the pile setting all the trees on fire and then spreading to the unharvested 100+ acres of soy. The children joined in with pleas because they began to be fearful of a spread to the house. Karl saw his defeat as he knew a battle with the three of us left him undermanned. We actually rolled the pile about 20 feet from it's original location and it is located quite a distance from the house.
The children and I started to collect the tools as Karl finished some prep work for a good size burn pile. He cut the grass down to the dirt in a 10 foot ring around the pile to reduce the chances of spreading flames.
