Well, we were on a good roll, and I am so glad that we made use of the nicer days we had in between the arctic freezes we've had this Winter. Right now it is just too cold for us to be working on the land. Day time temps are in the 20's and that doesn't include the windchill! I have today off, and am sick (allergies, not contagious) and want to see a friend, but I am not leaving this house unless it's an emergency.
On our latest trip out to the land, we used the milder temps to get out on to the watershed. We did better markings on property lines along the longer distances, using t-posts, no trespassing signs and survey tape. This will help Woodchuck when he decides when and how to make a path along the West and South boundaries!
We also marked all of the non-native/invasive trees that need to come out. We estimated about 15 Autumn Olives, (AO), a few honeysuckle, and at least one monster multi-flora rose (MFR). Those are all marked with survey tape, and I did harvest a few more rose hips from the MFR, though the wildlife seemed to have enjoyed most of them-as it should be.
Woodchuck gets turned around easily on the watershed. He hasn't been there as much as I have, I know it like the back of my hand now, and he was WAY off on where he thought the property marker on the South side was. Unfortunately, a new owner a couple of places down has decided to place his many, many chickens along that border side of the watershed. While I am grateful that he's feeding the many wild animals that may be able to get them (sarcasm), he has two dogs on watch out there 24/7 and what was my ONLY prerequisite for buying that land? NO.BARKING.DOGS. I've listened to several of them within a couple of feet my current home for 23 years and I am SO done with it. I want to hear breezes in the trees and birds singing, or heaven willing, nothing at all!!!! But I cannot be that lucky. At the land, we will now have 5 barking dogs surrounding us, though admittedly not within inches of us like we do here. The whole time we were on the watershed, those doggies were doing their job of staying noisy.
But I guided him on where the property should be, and sure enough I was able to find it. We own farther over than he remembered, so that was a nice thing to be able to surprise him with! We'll get another taller marker like we've got on other corners out there, so it will be easier to see. Many of the watershed signs are also broken, so I got a hold of the NRCS and they have new ones for us. I sure wish they were made with a more eco-friendly material though! Same with the survey tape. It's visibility works well for Woodchuck, but after being exposed to the elements, it becomes brittle.
We keep seeing something peeking out just above the surface of the watershed pond. It could be a thick reed from the phragmite, but it also looks curved like an antler. He never took the one boat over there, thinking that he was going to sell it, but I think that has fallen through and we are curious enough to want to see what that item is that we'll take it out on the water the next chance we get. It's not a big pond by any means, but we don't know how deep it is, and are sure that it's very mucky at the bottom no matter the depth. I would use my waders, but we don't need to place a call to the fire department to come pull me out of the muck. I wonder if Woodchuck's tractor would do that well? 😏
We walked around that pond, commenting on all of the antler rubs on the willow trees. He agreed that we should leave most of those stands, to provide shelter and a known pathway for the deer. No need to wipe them all out! There's only a couple that we need to remove to make the ingress/egress complete and I'd like to find a way to utilize that wood so it doesn't just get thrown in the massive burn pile that was never taken care of from the tree removal before. The NRCS will be out in the Spring to see the progress we've made, and work stops on April 1st due to ground nesting birds coming back to the area. So we only have a couple of months to get that stuff done. We still only have one day a week to work out there, and that's not promised every week with other stuff we need to get done and weather conditions. But when talking about the setback of building the house, we look at the brighter side and focus on the aspect that maybe we will be able to get a lot of the big stuff done before we move out there, that way when we are living there full-time, it will be more of an upkeep situation with the land, being able to rest and enjoy it, and less of the huge projects.
I also decided that I wanted to cut seed heads off of the phragmite. Woodchuck didn't seem all that enthused, but he followed me into the wilderness anyway. This was the first time I've ever had a chance to do this step with phragmite, having only ever taken seed heads off of teasel at a different public land place years ago as part of a volunteer program I participated in. I was SO excited to be doing this, this kind of thing is my jam. Originally Woodchuck was holding the garbage bag and I was cutting the seed heads with my favorite Fiskar cutters, but he wasn't content with that, and the bag kept getting caught on things and tearing holes in it--which of course defeats the purpose of having the seeds in the bag (so they don't spread). So I took over the bag and would set it down in as open a spot as I could find (there really weren't any), and then he leaned a few phragmite stems over (some were 12 foot tall!) to me and then I would cut the heads off and bag them.
Phragmite seeds are like dandelion seeds. Cute, fluffy, but easy drop and blow away. And phragmite is not a plant that you want spreading (yes. I can hear those of you who don't like dandelions. They are NOT weeds and are a very critical food source for bees and the first arriving Spring insects). The whole idea with cutting seed heads off is to reduce anymore seeds from falling/blowing off, thus reducing the ground seed bank. Over time of continually going out and cutting off seed heads, and/or treating the phragmite, each year will see less and less growth until, eventually, they can be eradicated from our land. It has been really hard for me to not stop along roadside stands of these things and cut those heads off and bag them up. I don't see road crews making efforts with the phragmite or the teasel and I'm not sure why nothing has been done by them, or why they have not reached out to other agencies for help.
While these that we cut are technically on land, they are on marshy land between the watershed pond and our blueberry bushes. The previous owner planted the blueberries RIGHT up to the watershed boundary. I can't blame him, there is very little land there not on government programs and that we can do whatever we want with. I can understand wanting to utilize and enjoy every inch of it! This land sits low, is muddy, holds water, and is ultimate fun for someone like me who likes being in those kind of wild places! I was climbing on downed trees to get to more phragmite, sinking in mud, and coo'ing over the vibrant greens of the mosses in this patch of my wilderness! I am one girl who's happiest when being covered in land stuff such as mud, dirt, etc. Not only do I get the healing of nature, but show that I have let nothing stand in my way of fighting for it. 💚
While I could have kept going, Woodchuck was ready to call it quits. He estimates that we cut off at least 40 seed heads, and that's good progress for our first time out there! While we intend on stopping out there tomorrow to take a leisurely walk around, we most likely won't work. Anything that had been wet and mushy before will now be icy and slippery. Maybe we will try and see what that thing is on the watershed pond though! Very soon we will be meeting our friends out there who haven't seen the land yet, and who secured some nice LED lights for us from a school gym that was upgrading. Woodchuck will use them in the barn. We also need to think about trimming the blueberry bushes, which we should be able to handle even in the mud and ice of the marshy land they are planted on.
We did also use our l day off last week, in the snow, to cut the front tree line here at home that people were complaining about. While we needed to cut close to 3 feet off to be in complete compliance with the ordinance, that would have taken the whole sides of the trees off. So we cut a foot and a half off and many of the highway department employees were driving past that day and saw us. So hopefully seeing the effort we made will be enough for everyone who had an issue. 🖕
Yet to be done: cutting down the black locust trees on the railroad property between our driveway and the train tracks, and then watch the Tree of Heaven to see if our efforts finally killed them. In the meantime, I have a burn pit full of white cedar cuttings that I am looking forward to burning and smudging the hell out of this place and anyone surrounding us. They will burn quickly, and will smell great, but it will be a show! 😇🔥
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