Harrowing, done

Last Sunday I finished my harrowing for the year as I got the south pastured harrowed.   First I had to remove the downed branches from last November's snow storm.

Here is another tree where I had to clean branches from.  The photo was taken after I removed the branches.   Not all the branches fell from the tree.  I had a few branches that remained attached to the tree.  Barely.  I had to climb up the tree to use a handsaw to cut the branches.  The arrow shows how high I had to go.

An example.  The branch is 99% broken, but it is still holding on.

Here is the last tree I had to remove the branches from.  This is a "before I removed the branches" photo.   It is hard to see in the photos, but I had to climb this tree also and cut on five branches to completely remove the branches hanging from the tree.  In the photo on the right, the light colored branch over halfway up the tree, I left that branch there as I didn't want to climb that high.

The top of this photo was highest I climbed in this tree.

An example where the branch broke off the tree on its own.

Raking to clean the area of the branches was a pain.  Lots and lots and lots of small pine cones were there.   The pine cones would get stuck in the rake and I would have to stop and pull them off the rake.  Many, many, ... many! times.  Often, every three or four times of raking.   It was annoying and slowed me down.   The geese liked me cleaning up the pines cones.  I tossed the cones in a low area near the river.  A goose then built a nest on the pile of pine cones and hatched her eggs there.  She liked it as the area was close to the river but not that close, and was dry.

All my raking was hard on my rake.  I had to fix the handle as the rake broke off the handle.  Not pretty, but it works.

It took a few days to harrow the south pasture.   This is the latest I have harrowed the pasture.  The grass was growing tall.

Partially harrowed.  Can you see the difference?

I am done harrowing.

Once again I was hard on the harrows.   There are six harrow pieces chained to each other.  The middle two pieces are now broken up.

To get from the south pasture back to the middle pasture I had to go through the hayfield.  Not ideal, but I had no choice.

So glad to be done with the harrowing.  I ended up hauling eight high pickup loads of smaller branches and pine cones away.  My chain saw still worked and I ended up cutting the larger branches for firewood.  I got one heaping pickup load of cut branches hauled away. 

I wanted to get the harrowing done.  I still have a pickup load of branches to haul, but those branches were right next to a few trees and I could easily harrow around those branches.