This is something that I've been working on for over five years and think that I might actually accomplish in the next few months. For those of you unfamiliar with East Texas, it's heavily wooded with pines and hardwoods. My place was extremly thick and almost impossible to walk through.
I pretty much started at the begining and cut openings into the timber with my dozer and backhoe. Then I made those opening bigger and bigger until I had an open area.
I tried to sell the trees, but nobody was interested. I talked to several dozen logging companies with all sorts of replies. Some said they were not interested, others said they would be there on a certain date. None ever showed up. I had a thread going on this back then and found out that Harvey had a friend who wanted some logs. I gave him all he would take!!! Luckily, Harvey was able to come over and help load them up for him.
I've been burning trees for years now. It seems to be never ending, but looking at these old pictures, it's also kind of amazing to see the changes. Some of the trees that I took out were massive and I was hesitant to remove them. Now I find it dificult to remember them and there isn't a one of them that I miss.
I got sidetracked by other projects like building my house and digging my lake, but never forgot about clearing my pasture. In 2006, I started moving dirt and piling it up for use in other areas of my land. This turned out to be a pretty big mountain of dirt, that I'm still working on today.
This past October, Steph and I hosted a TBN get-together here. Rob and Don both wanted to drive my dozer, so I let them start on digging my trench through my pasture. The lay of the land is such that when it rains, half, if not more, of the water that lands in my pasture doesn't make it to my lake. I dug a trench with my backhoe through the high spot of land and was able to increase my watershed by a significant amount. Instead of leaving the tranch there, I want it to look like a natural area that cuves with gentle slopes.
To do this, I need to move allot of dirt. The dozer is perfect for this. It moves it short distances very quickly. Rob and Don got it started, I've been working on getting it finished.
I went to bed last night thinking how much dirt I was going to move today. Then a client called this morning, and I didn't get started on moving dirt until this afternoon.
Once I get the first few loads dumped, I get into a rythem and it becomes allot of fun!!!
Eddie,
If you go to "accurate reloading.com" ther's a forum titled "game management". There's a bunch of wildlife biologists there that can give you some great suggestions about what to plant in your food plot.
__________________ I plan to screech to a sideways stop at heavens gate, jump out with a cigar in one hand, a scotch in the other, yelling "WOOHOO!! WHAT A RIDE!!!"
Thank you for the tip. I'm going to spend some time there reading up on what everyone has to say!!!!!
I've sort of been relying on http://forages.tamu.edu/PDF/scs2000-24.pdf on what to plant. I sort of like their schedule of planting warm season and cool season plants in the spring and then in the fall. Cowpea's in the spring and then winter wheat in the fall.
I spend too much time online reading up on this stuff, and it just gets more and more confusing. Chufa sounds interesting, but it also reminds me of clover and then a few years ago, lab lab. Both were the ultimate, wonder plants that have sort of gone by the sidelines to the new wonder plants. I never seem to read anything about cowpeas, but from talking to two different biologists here in East Texas, and one guy who sells seed and fertalizers all across Texas and New Mexico, cowpeas seem like the constant plant that they all recomend.
One of the things that I'm looking forward to is seeing the plants grow. I don't really care what I'm growing, as long as it grows!!! Then of course, it will be fun to see what the deer like and what they avoid.
I figured it would take me two days to haul off the rest of the big dirt hill. Like always when estimating how long it will take to move dirt, I was wrong. Three very long days to get it done!!!!
There are two more dirt piles to move, but I'm tired of moving dirt, so I thought I'd work on my burn pile. The forecast is for a big storm to come through, so I like to burn just before it hits to cut down on the potential for a forest fire. The only other time that I feel safe is right after it rains. The winds were really kicking up, so I decided to pass on the burning, but still work on my burn pile.
Trees are very hard to burn when full length. Cut them into a few pices and they burn right up. My pile had about 20 full length trees in it, plus twice that many saplings. I've been burning it off and on for the last few months, but not realy getting anywhere with those full sized trees. Today, I pulled the pile apart and cut the trees into shorter lengths, then piles them back up again. As you can see in the picture, the burn pile is half as long as it used to be.
The trees along the third dirt pile have to come out. It's what's left of where teh targets were located for Rifle Range #4. My land was part of Camp Fanin, a World War 2 Army Base. The bullets flew over the dirt and the soldiers hid behind the dirt piles. After shooting, they pulled the targets, marked them, and put them back up again. All that's left is some comcrete and a few pieces of creosoted 8x8's. The trees have had since the base closed in 1945 to grow. Some of them on top were absolutely huge. These are pretty small and came out real easy.
The weather stopped me from moving any more dirt, so I've tried a few times to get the burn pile to catch fire. I thought I had a good fire going the other day, but it just sort of fizzled out.
Today, we brought out some paper and got a good fire going. Then we kept adding branches to it for about an hour before it really started to burn. I went back to it twice with the backhoe and pushed it around some to sort of stoke it up, which seemed to work.
I'm pretty bad at getting a fire going, so this will be a drawn out process before I get it all burned. My goal is to get rid of this burn pile, then after I level out the dirt on the other side of the ditch, start my next burn pile over there. I need this area cleared so I can remove at least 2 feet of dirt under it so that I can get the grade that I'm looking for.
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Creating my Food Plot 
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