Billy Goat

 We continue to hit the ground running concerning all things with the land. I am terrified that another emergency will happen in our personal lives and we will lose time again, though I willingly take care of my family first. I long for the days when the land will be in maintenance mode and we can enjoy it more than just work on it!

The weather on our latest trip was sunny, but that damn wind was cold/cool again, and our morning began with everything covered in frost. Woodchuck rented a Billy Goat machine to start taking care of some of the brushy areas throughout the land, so we drove to pick that up first. We were only going to have it for about 6 hours, so hubby needed to get going on his thing with it and I needed to get going on cleaning up area of fallen limbs so that he could get into it with the machine. We walked the areas first together to talk about where he could go with the machine and what to leave alone. 

I was all ready to go! I could do this! And in less than two hours, I was dragging. That was partly due to having to walk away from the area I was working in to create piles for the branches, where I would have saved steps and energy if I could have piled them closer. My original idea was to have Woodchuck park the tractor by the area, and I would fill the bucket with branches to be taken over to the burn pile, but he pointed out that I would be filling that bucket quickly and it would be up to me to drive the tractor back and forth. I just didn't have the mental capacity for that on this day an the ground was still very wet and muddy and I didn't want to deal with tearing that up and slipping around. 

I am really hard on myself when I struggle physically, because my brain is telling me, "LOOK! Look at all of this stuff that needs to be done and you only have so much of a timeframe to get it done! And you are capable!", while my body is telling me, "Lady. Stop it." My hip does really well after the injection, except for certain movements, and apparently cutting and bending and carrying out limbs and fallen trees is a thing it doesn't care for. Neither does my ankle, which still has a tear in it after ten years of doctors waiting for it to heal. I was also working in the shade, and sweaty but chilly. I was grateful when break-time came!

These are the before pictures of a corner that is kind of divided in half long-ways by a property line. I would have just gone in and cleaned the whole thing up, even what isn't ours, but I've got my hands full enough without doing other peoples work. 👇

There was a monster of a honeysuckle that I needed to take down, but some of its limbs were holding up a dead tree that I literally could have just pushed over myself. Had to think before cutting and make sure I wasn't standing in the wrong spot! I took the limbs off a little high first, then started chopping away at the trunk itself. I would say this honeysuckle was about 10 foot before I started cutting it. 👇

I was struggling and needed to keep taking breaks. So I stopped and just listened to the birds and stood in patches of sunlight. I was grateful when 11:00 came around and we had someone meeting us at the land to talk about fixing the leaking side of the pond.  He was running behind, so we pulled out some chairs and sat in the sun to eat lunch. I looked around me, partly overwhelmed at the scope of everything still left to do through the nearly 16 acres, and partly in awe that I am charged with taking care of this beautiful place. 

The contractor showed up and was a really nice guy. Gave us a quote but was also honest about concerns that the new bank won't work if it's a muck soil area that the leak is occurring in. I remembered that we were given a soil map and dozen page report from the NRCS and just looked it over.....and ugh. Muck soil. So I sent the map to Woodchuck so he could send it to the contractor. The guy got right back to him and said that once the water tables lower and we are more in a drought stage, say around August, we will come out and did the pond to find out how far down he has to go to hit sand. Honestly, I am getting closer and closer to the mindset that we just need to start completely over with that pond if he wants to keep it. In looking for all of that paperwork though, I did find I had spoken incorrectly previously about not being able to work the watershed from April 1-October 1..it's actually only until August 1!!! So that was a great reminder that we have more time out there than I remembered. So much to keep track of! I even have it written in my little land project notebook and still forgot. D'OH!

While walking the contractor around, I noticed the pipe coming from someone else's property North of us was leaking again because the brace holding it up and fallen into the water. I went in and propped it back up. We HAVE to start nipping these kinds of things in the bud if we are going to control the water levels in the pond. We have at least four other areas OFF of our land that are affecting it, yet we are the ones paying the price (literally!) for it. I mean, let's start at point A, shall we? 

Once that meeting was done, we got back to work. Woodchuck had to help me finish picking up wood from my area because he was ready to go in with the machine and I didn't have it ready for him. Plus, some of the pieces were too big for me to lift on my own. While he worked the machine in this area, I went into the forest to start pulling garlic mustard. Yes, that battle has begun already! After pics of the tree line 👇

We will go back into the area in a few days to cut down the larger dead trees on our side. We plan to use this strip to plant the elderberries we are getting next month. With a little time to spare before having to return the machine, we went for a walk to one of Woodchuck's wooden log benches he made and stopped to catch our breath. I still needed to walk the watershed to grab an ootheca that I left out there thinking that it was a Carolina mantis, and I was wrong, and I wanted to check for evidence of trespassers. We must have gotten a lot of precipitation since we were out here last Friday, because water tables were high in the ditches and pond, and there was a lot of standing water.

I found the ootheca, it was still in the same spot and had not been damaged by the rain, snow and winds. 

I came back to the bench from my walk to find Woodchuck napping 😂

 We were looking forward to returning the machine and getting home. This morning finds me panicking that we will have to spend so much money on fixing the pond and ditches that we won't be able to build. I also have things at our current home to fix, like the roofs. The price quotes for such small roofs are insanely high, but it's not a job that Woodchuck or I can do ourselves anymore now that we are older. Thank goodness I have therapy today so I can get all of these thoughts out of my head, and fling my anxiety at some pillows in frustrated rage. Hope you have a release today too!