Trees Be Gone!

Well we made it through the holidays with no major problems. We celebrated Christmas in Pine Mountain (PM) from Sunday the 23rd until late morning on Christmas Day. Then, we drove back to Marietta for Christmas with my in-laws on Christmas night and the following day. All in all, it was a wonderful time with each of our family members. I really enjoy watching them opening their gifts… my Mom was so surprised when she opened her new digital camera. I had saved the money for it because I knew that I wanted to give her that for a while now. Santa brought my nephew, Austin one of those Wii game systems. This is one of those games that you act out the actions when you play tennis or bowling or baseball. You should have seen us doing the actual movements of bowling in the den without an actual bowling ball in our hand. I thought I was going to throw my shoulder out of socket! Amazingly enough, I am MUCH better at bowling on the Wii than at the lanes… hmmm…. Makes me wonder why… We drove back down to PM to work on the property. We hired a guy to come do some brush and tree clearing for us. We learned that the people who farmed this land back years ago must have raised hogs. How do we know that? Because we spent 2 and ½ days cutting the hog fencing and barbed wire! We also dismantled an entire chicken coop that we found along the way. Even though it was cold outside, we were drenched with sweat trying to work ahead of the machine. Oh, I forgot about the machine- this thing is like a Bobcat with a huge grinder-thingy on the front. This thing can lift the front grinder up to a tree and just break it and then chew it up all the way to the ground…
We watched in awe for three days as this monster just ate through trees and brush. We went back down there again this past Saturday and worked from 7am to 6pm… We just kept finding more and more fencing in the brush that we did not know was there before. I completely wore out my leather work gloves by mid-day Saturday. My fingers are still so sore from gripping the wire cutters and my fingertips are raw from dragging old metal parts and rubbish, fencing, barbed wire, cedar posts, tree limbs, etc. Oh, did I mention that a large part of the hog fencing also had wood pallets entwined in the fencing wire? Not fun to dismantle!
HOG FENCING

We went back Sunday just to walk the areas where the trees and brush are no more. We took lots of photos and came home. And I am still beat even today…

BEFORE


AFTER