Pasture cleanup

A few days ago I finally finished cleaning the pastures.  It took some time as some of the photos when I started cleaning still had snow on the ground.  The large windstorm in January, and then another wind event a few weeks ago, broke off a number of tree branches.  Entire branches.  Quite a number of parts of branches, from less than a foot, to two feet or three feet.  These smaller branches then flew quite a ways across the pasture before reaching the ground.  Those were a lot of effort to gather and remove.

I used a wheelbarrow to clean the branches in the south pasture as most of those branches were smaller branches.  Many wheelbarrows were filled over a number of days.  In the middle pasture not as many wheelbarrow loads (just seven) as that pasture had more large branches, and branches from a fallen tree.  I filled three pickup loads to remove those branches.

I also have a couple of areas in the middle pasture where smaller trees are growing.  They are growing too close to one another.  So for the past few years I have been thinning them by removing some of the trees.  I do this over time as in the past when I removed all the trees except the one or two I want a strong would would break the remaining trees.  Going slow in the removal gives the remaining trees a chance to get use to the wind so they won't break off as easily.

Here is a photo of some of the smaller trees I cut into logs.  When dry I use them in my woodstove to heat my house.

Really small trees don't make it.  The cattle eat them until there are no needles left and the trees die.

Then it was on to removing the large broken branches still on a large tree.  This is a massive tree and many branches were larger than the small trees I had earlier cut down.  It may not look high in the photo, but I had to completely extend an extension ladder to reach the higher broken branches.  Even then I had to climb off the ladder and climb on and stand on other branches to reach a few more broken branches.   To cut the branches I used a handsaw as I didn't want to use a chainsaw standing way up high.  So it took me a number of days to cut and remove the branches.

There was an old dead branch that had been somehow hanging on.  The branch hung straight down.  At the high point I had climbed (still only a third of the way up the tree) I could reach the end of the branch.  I moved the branch back and forth in an effort to get it to finally break off the tree.  Over and over.  Nothing.  Then I twisted the branch a little bit and finally after some twisting the branch came down.  The problem was the branch did not fall straight down.  The branch turned slightly.  I was standing on some branches and holding on to other branches as the tree trunk was too large to reach around to hold on to.  The falling branch hit one of my hands holding on to another branch.  Ouch!!!  This happened some weeks ago so my hand is now healed.  But it was very sore earlier.  Fortunately nothing was broken in my hand.

Some other broken branches fell on to other branches and it took some effort to get the broken branches down to the ground.  But I did it.  I didn't fall out of the tree.  And I prevented the ladder from being knocked over a few times as a falling branch decided to fall a way I didn't think it would.

Yup.  The January windstorm broke all these branches on the tree.

I cut up the branches to later use a firewood.  As you can see they were large branches.

This branch broke off on another tree during our less severe March windstorm.  I had already cleaned the January broken branches from under this tree before the March windstorm.  To reach this branch I had to stand in my pickup and use a rake to barely reach the branch to pull it down to fall to the ground.

Once the broken branches were finally cleaned from the pastures, I also clean/removed one of my old branch piles.  This is one of my oldest piles of old branches.  It was from a tree that blew over many years ago.  Back then when I cut off the tree trunk's branches I would pile them on part of the tree trunk as I planned to clean everything up a short time later.  I don't remember what distracted me / took time away from me doing the final clean up.  When I started the pasture clean up many weeks ago I had used the chainsaw to cut up some of the fallen trees.  After I did so I took the time to also cut up and remove the tree trunks under this and one other branch pile.  So in this photo that is why the branch pile now has this funny looking spot in the middle of the pile.  That was where the old tree trunk formerly was.  This took two pickup loads to haul away.

This pickup load has part of the tree trunk from the fallen tree in the north pasture, and the tree trunk from the tree that last year fell over on top of one of my apple trees.  (Here is a link to photos of that tree:  https://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2020/06/tree-work-corral-work.html)

My log pile.  You can tell which of the tree branches and logs I recently cleaned from the pastures and which are old tree logs I had placed in the pile and had not yet gotten around to splitting.  I have enough firewood for years. And this is one one of three piles of cut logs.  This pile is the size of the other two log piles put together.  And I already have enough split firewood for a year or two of burning in my woodstove.

So my pastures are finally clean and now I could start harrowing them.

By the way, I caught the second pocket gopher today.