At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

Just beautiful Obed....I am surprised to see no snow...I thought I heard on the news this AM that Gatlinberg...Tenn..the Smokey's got 22" of Snow....

No snow here yet. We are lower in altitude than most of the Smokeys. We have been heating with the fireplace all week though. I split a couple pallets of wood this past Saturday. I'm getting ready to break out the chainsaws and get to work. I have enough wood cut and split to heat the house through mid-December. I seems like I always feel behind.
Obed

 

[Obed]

Those are some great pictures....Be careful not to cut the red ones by accident The place has a maturing look about it, shows all you and your wife`s hard work.......Tony

Tony,
That's a good point. I love color of the red leaves. We may eventually clean out some of the small trees and saplings in front of the house. However, many of the small ones may have red leaves.
Obed

 

[brin]

No snow here yet. We are lower in altitude than most of the Smokeys. We have been heating with the fireplace all week though. I split a couple pallets of wood this past Saturday. I'm getting ready to break out the chainsaws and get to work. I have enough wood cut and split to heat the house through mid-December. I seems like I always feel behind.
Obed

Obed, if it makes you feel better....We built our house and moved in 8 yrs. ago yesterday and I still don't feel like I have finished all I want to do...Sure the house is finished., very much like your house by the way, but the little things outside like manicuring the woods and hiking trails and the lawn is not up to par as far as I am concerned...It aggravates me sometimes..Just seems like we never can sit back and say...." There we are finished " I need to cut wood too and I have to go to our farm and cut some wood there too and then haul it back...see what I mean...?

 

[tony Cecil]

I wouldn`t touch the view from your porch...It is beautiful, and `mother nature` can`t be improved upon.......Keep these pictures of the view handy and refer to them any time you get the urge to `purge` ... Some people cut all the under brush , and many times it is the sourwood, maples of various colors, and other really beautiful shrubs that just look plain until this time of year..

Another mistake I have made, is purchasing `field` grown nursery trees, and planting them in different locations that are different than where they were grown.....Thirty years later they are still out of synch with everything else and don`t even have a good fall color.....Tony

 

[dstig1]

Obed, You've come a long way. It takes a lot of time to get really settled. You are really in very good shape. Next year, you should have your firewood well in hand, as you are much better off this year than last. Then you will get a couple years ahead of your need and be in really good shape. That kind of cushion is nice.

On the leaves - a color mix is also very important. We have a TON of oak up here. It all goes brown. The basswood and poplar goes yellow, but it is dull yellow. Maples go bright yellow to red and that is nice to have to blend in. The mix really helps the look. That's all I'm sayin'

 

[Obed]

We don't plan on cutting any of the stuff behind the house other than any trees the excavator contractor damaged. Although it won't be anytime soon, my wife has indicated the desire to clear some of the undergrowth in the natural area in front of the house. It might be nice to get a better view of the house when approaching the house down the driveway. The house is quite obscured when the leaves are on the trees. Right now, the natural area in front of the house has briars, dead stuff, etc. and just looks unkempt. I'd hate to lose the red leaves though.

 

[Obed]

It's nice to start cutting firewood again. I prefer not to do chainsaw work in the warm/hot weather. However, I'm quite comfortable cutting firewood when the temps are in the 40's.

I was nervous that the wood splitter might not start but it had no problems. Fortunately, I had run it out of gas the last time I used it 8 months earlier. On the lawnmower, I have started turning the gas valve off before driving the mower into the garage. When the mower gets in the garage, I now let it run until the gas in the carborator is all used up. Fortunately, I have a nearby source for non-ethanol gas which is a HUGE blessing for our small engines. I dread the thoughts of that gas station no longer carrying the non-ethanol gas.

I have that wrapping the pallets with chicken wire works great. It's simple and cheap and makes moving firewood around a breeze.

 

[Obed]

I finally cleaned out these tall weeds growing in front of the house by the culvert. They have bugged me all summer. It only took 10 minutes with a hand sling to deal with them but it always seemed like other things took priority.

When I started cutting down the weeds, my little girl came by and told me, "You're breaking my house." Apparently, those weeds were a make-believe house of hers. I kind of hated to continue removing them. However, I explained to her that the weeds were ugly and had to go, then finished "breaking" her house.

In the meantime, she picked up a rake and "helped" me rake.

 

[Obed]

Since I already have the backhoe attached to the tractor for the shrubbery digging around the house, I've been keeping my eyes open for other backhoe tasks. Up the hill from the house, the path through the woods makes a "Y". At the junction of the three paths, there were 3 small trees that made the intersection tighter than I liked so I removed the trees. Two of the trees came out of the ground fairly easily. However, one of the trees had a stubborn tap root that went straight down. It took a little more work to get that tree out of the ground.

The backhoe attachment has been very handy for our house and homesteading project. However, it is an expensive tool and could be tough to justify from a financial standpoint. When I saw the tractor for sale used, it just happened to have a backhoe attached to it so that's why I have a backhoe. I am glad I have it because there are some tasks that would be tough to do or impractical to do without it. It is very useful when you want to take remove a tree without leaving a stump. Removing these 3 small trees without leaving stumps in the path would have been a significant amount of work without the backhoe. In fact, if I didn't have the backhoe, I would have cut down the trees and left the stumps to have to drive around and try not to damage a tire everytime I went through that part of the path. With the backhoe, the task was trivial. But, if I could only have a box blade or a backhoe, I would choose the box blade in a heartbeat.

 

[brin]

Obed, You may well know but on your trees with red leaves...some of them may well be sassafras trees..If you are not familiar with them, they smell like root beer...they make great tea and are just fun to smell...so if you are clearing little red trees be sure to smell them first...you might choose to leave them and enjoy the medicinal tea or make your own root beer...the roots are especially aromatic....